Sokles Explained

Sokles was an ancient Greek potter, active in the middle of the 6th century BC, in Athens.The following signed Little-master cups or fragments thereof are known, all of them painted by the Sokles Painter:

• Berlin, Antikensammlung F 1781
• Bolligen, Collection Rolf Blatter
• Daskyleion, Excavation E 108.107
• Madrid, Museo Arqueologico Nacional 10947 (L 56)
• Malibu (CA), J. Paul Getty Museum 86.AE.158
• Oxford, Ashmolean Museum 1929.498
• Switzerland, private collection
• Taranto, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 20910

He belongs to the group of so-called Little masters.A red-figure plate in Paris, Louvre CA 2181, painted in style similar to that of the painter Paseas, is signed by a potter named Soklees. Whether that craftsman is identical with the black-figure potter Sokles remains unclear. The signature may also not be authentic.

Bibliography

• John Beazley

Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters, Oxford 1956, p. 172.

• John Beazley: Attic Red-figure Vase-painters, 2nd ed. Oxford 1963, p. 164.
• John Beazley: Paralipomena. Additions to Attic black-figure vase-painters and to Attic red-figure vase-painters, Oxford 1971, p. 72.
• Kutalmış Görkay

"Attic Black-Figure Pottery from Daskyleion, in: Studien zum antiken Kleinasien IV, Asia Minor Studien 34, Bonn 1999, Pl. 5, 47.

• Rolf Blatter: Sokles, in: Künstlerlexikon der Antike Vol. 2, 2004, p. 404.