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This even covering of the surface gives the vases of this period a carpet-like appearance, and this textile impression is strengthened by the geometry of the ornamentation, by the angular stylization of the living beings, by the decorative schemes and the division into bands. But on this account to derive the whole style from the imitation of works of the loom would be a mistake; the stylistic limitations of the style cannot be identified straight off with the technical limitation of weaving. As in all primitive civilizations so in the formation of the Geometric vase style, simple linear patterns may have been taken over from weaving and plaiting: but this is not the case with circles and rosettes, and anyhow such a consistent and systematic perfection as that of the Geometric vase style is inconceivable as an imitation of a foreign technique.

Greek ceramic art never completely lost this ‘textile’ character, and never quite renounced the Geometric school through which it passed, though by centuries of labour it freed itself from the defects and crudities of that school. Vase-figures long exhibit their origin out of the ornamental silhouette; the decorative schemes of arrangement in rows and of antithetic groups are always breaking out afresh; the principle of using up the space is applied superficially for some time and only gradually refined; the decoration in bands subsists for a long time beside the vases with a pictorial field, and remains of it exist till late; the disinclination for deepening the field, based on a correct structural feeling, goes through the whole history of Greek vases and keeps the ornamental figure world of the vases always at a distance from the much less constrained world of free painting.