Fig. 42 shows
a few of the characteristic shapes and decorations; some
additional pieces may be seen in Fig. 43. The Mycenaean vases are
mostly wheel-made. The decoration, in the great majority of
examples, is applied in a lustrous color, generally red, shading
to brown or black. The favorite elements of design are bands and
spirals and a variety of animal and vegetable forms, chiefly
marine. Thus the vase at the bottom of Fig. 42, on the left, has a
conventionalized nautilus; the one at the top, on the right, shows
a pair of lily-like plants; and the jug in the middle of Fig. 43
is covered with the stalks and leaves of what is perhaps meant for
seaweed. Quadrupeds and men belong to the latest period of the
style, the vase-painters of the early and central Mycenaean
periods having abstained, for some reason or other, from those
subjects which formed the stock in trade of the gem-engravers.
The Mycenaean pottery was gradually superseded by pottery of an
essentially different style, called Geometric, from the character
of its painted decorations.
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