Selecting types of pottery and defining periods of manufacture is difficult, but necessary for this image-driven browse facility. Since the dominant fabric in CVA overall is Greek and Greek-related, the chronological divisions in this program correspond broadly to periods of major Greek and related styles. In the future there will be programs about regions producing the pottery.

Images for "Types of Pottery" are taken from pottery in the Ashmolean Museum, a collection formed by scholars for the teaching of students. Arthur Evans, J.D. Beazley and John Boardman were involved with the Mediterranean section, Flinders Petrie with the Egyptian, David Hogarth, Leonard Woolley and Roger Moorey with the Near and Middle Eastern.

Terminology

The more than three hundred fascicules of CVA that have appeared since Pottier's first, in 1922, have used more than 200 terms for styles of decoration. Many are now obsolete. The digitised CVA recognises all fabrics as they were identified in the fascicules, even when the terms are considered to be incorrect or obsolete. They are merged with terms current in scholarship today. The modern term is the default.

Robert Cook gave a useful account of obsolete terminology in Greek Painted Pottery (London, 1997) 325-330 (Glossary) and 275-311 (History of the study of Greek vases).