Arts of Pots

The beginning of  some big technological and economic changes in the Western pottery industry. First, people began painting pottery red instead of black. Then they began making it in molds instead of painting it. Around the same time, the Phoeniciansinvented glass-blowing, and this made glass cheap enough to be a serious competitor with pottery. People pretty much stopped making pottery cups, and everyone drank out of glasses. Even a lot of bowls, and little things like perfume containers, were made out of glass.

Also, by about 100 AD, most of the nicer pottery used in the Roman Empire was made in North Africa and shipped by boat all over the Empire, using the sea and the rivers.

The Arab invasion of North Africa around 700 AD ended the North African pottery trade, and after that pottery was locally made again for some time in the

West, and not very good. The next great developments in pottery were not in the West but in Sui Dynasty China, where potters began to make porcelain (PORR-se-lenn) cups and pitchers around 700 AD. This gleaming white pottery was popular not only in China but in West Asia too. But it was very expensive in West Asia, because it had to be carried all the way from China on donkeys andcamels. So the West Asian potters invented lead glazes, which made ordinary pots look white and shiny. This made a kind of imitation porcelain which was a lot cheaper.