Greece’s Ceramic Tradition

Most people are familiar with the fantastic pottery of the ancient world. Yet less is known about the more recent pottery traditions of Greece.

Plain, polished or glazed, decorated or not, the pottery of the modern period was created largely to serve the immediate needs of the household. Pottery workshops existed all over Greece – in Thessalonica, Kozani, Florina, Nea Karvali, Kavala, Argos Orestikon, Diavata, as well as the islands of Rhodes, Samos, Lesvos, Sifnos, Thasos, Skyros, Corfu, etc. Much of the clay came from the islands, brought to the workshops in caciques. In addition to the workshops there were also traveling potters.

After what is known as the "Asia Minor Disaster" of 1922, skilled potters were among those Greeks who left Turkey. Inheritors of the Middle Eastern tradition, they helped revive the ceramic art of Greece.

With the invention of mass-production pottery, much of these traditions have been lost. However, a few craftsmen still make ceramics the traditional way, notably in the island of Sifnos. Another – albeit larger – pottery source is Ionia. This company creates ceramics that reference both Greece’s distant, as well as its more recent and folkloric, past.