Vase Tattoo Meaning

Containment, display, ceremony, and the vessel that serves the beauty it holds.

The Vase is the vessel that serves the beauty it holds — the container made to display and honor what is placed within it, the canvas of narrative art and the emblem of peace, the vessel whose usefulness lies in its emptiness, the home it gives to the cut flower's beautiful, dying display. To carry the Vase is to carry containment, display, ceremony, and the vessel that serves the beauty it holds — the storied amphora of the Greeks, the peace-bringing porcelain of China, the holder of beautiful impermanence, the useful emptiness.

The Greek vase was far more than a container: for five centuries it was the primary medium of narrative art in the Greek world. The painted pottery of ancient Greece — in its many specialized forms, the amphora (for storage), the krater (for mixing wine and water), the lekythos (for oil), the hydria (for water), the kylix (for drinking) — was decorated with scenes of myth, daily life, gods, heroes, and stories, and the black-figure and red-figure pottery of Athens (c. 620–400 BCE) carries the most complete visual record of Greek mythology that survives. So much of what we know of how the Greeks pictured their gods and heroes, their myths and rituals, comes from these painted vases — the great surviving gallery of Greek art and story.

The Greek vase was also remarkable for being many things at once. It was simultaneously a functional object, an art object, and a sacred object: the same vessels were used for the practical tasks of daily life — storing wine, carrying water, holding oil — and were also exquisite works of painted art, and also served sacred purposes, used as burial offerings placed with the dead and as dedications in the decoration of temples. A single beautifully painted amphora might hold wine, display a masterpiece of mythological scene, and be offered to the dead or the gods. The Greek vase thus united the useful, the beautiful, and the holy in one object — the storied pottery that carried the myths of Greece on its painted sides while serving the needs of life, art, and the sacred alike. It is the vessel as canvas, the container that became the great medium of Greek art and the keeper of its myths. The Greek vase was the primary medium of narrative art for five centuries — the painted amphora and krater carrying the surviving record of Greek myth. The Greek vase is the storied pottery of Greece — the primary medium of narrative art for five centuries: the amphora, krater, lekythos, hydria, and kylix, with the black-figure and red-figure pottery of Athens (c. 620–400 BCE) carrying the most complete surviving visual record of Greek mythology; the vase simultaneously functional object, art object, and sacred object — used for wine storage, water carrying, burial offerings, and temple decoration — uniting the useful, the beautiful, and the holy, the vessel as canvas that became the great medium of Greek art and the keeper of its myths.

The Greek vase-painting tradition (c. 620–400 BCE) is the primary source for much of our knowledge of Greek mythology — the black-figure technique (figures in black silhouette on red clay) gave way to the red-figure technique (figures in red on black ground) around 530 BCE; the red-figure allowed more naturalistic rendering of the human form and became the dominant style. The Euphronios krater (c. 515 BCE) — depicting the death of Sarpedon — is one of the most celebrated Greek vases; it was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1972 CE and returned to Italy in 2008 CE after its illegal excavation was documented. John Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819 CE) is the most celebrated poem in English about a vase — 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know'; the urn Keats addressed was probably composite, based on several actual Greek vessels he had seen. Chinese porcelain's global impact: the Chinese word for fine ceramic (瓷器, cíqì) gave European languages their word — the Portuguese porcelana (from the cowrie shell, porcelain's shape) → French porcelaine → English porcelain; Chinese export porcelain transformed European decorative arts from the 16th century CE onward and prompted European efforts to discover the manufacturing secret (achieved at Meissen, Germany, 1709 CE).

Vase across cultures

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