Attic Black Blog

Swallows arrive late in Athens this year, inspiring a June reflection on summer, birds, and ancient Greek pottery — from the word χελιδών to a famous red-figure pelike.

May takes its name from Maia, a figure linked with growth, fertility, and the nurturing force of spring. This short article connects the ancient meanings of May with the extraordinary Sotades Tomb, found in nineteenth-century Athens, where a delicate cup showing a seated woman and child offers a quiet image of care, infancy, and the fragile hope of renewal.

At THETIS and ATTIC BLACK, remaking ancient ceramics is not understood as simple copying. It is a process shaped by research, reconstruction, and a sustained dialogue between ancient forms, lost techniques, and the present.

March is a threshold month by the sea—when the light shifts, the coast feels alive again, and simple fish cooking returns to the table. This post revisits ancient Greek fish plates, especially the South Italian masterpieces of the 4th century BCE, with their painted seafood “menus” and spiny rockfish/scorpionfish forms. From the realism—and quiet humor—of these plates to the enduring taste of kakavia, one idea carries through time: the Mediterranean sea as everyday abundance, worthy of both art and appetite.

The White-Slip Chian Chalice
An elegant drinking cup from Archaic Chios (6th century BC), the Chian chalice is defined by its high foot, refined proportions, and luminous white slip. Widely traded across the eastern Mediterranean, it became the signature vessel of Chian workshops and a symbol of early Ionian ceramic sophistication. This month, we reintroduce the Chian chalice through informed contemporary production, decorated by ceramicist Iphigenia Nalbani, following documented archaeological prototypes and traditional techniques—reviving a form where craft, knowledge, and restraint come together.

January invites adjustment rather than reinvention. It is the moment we return to our homes and reconsider how objects, spaces, and people coexist. Mix and match in home decoration—often called eclectic style—is not a recent invention, nor an easy one....