In no other art of antiquity do we come closer to the visual experience of the ancient Greeks or share their views on life, myth, and even politics. The stylistic history of Greek vases has been demonstrated in other Thames & Hudson books by John Boardman. Here he sketches that history but goes on to explore the many other matters that make the study so fruitful.

He describes the methods of making and decorating vases, the processes of identifying the artists, life in the potters' quarter in Greek towns, the way in which the wares were traded far beyond the borders of the Greek world, from Morocco to Persia, from Russia to the Sudan, and problems in making and decorating them. He shows how Greek artists exercised a style of narrative in art that was long influential in the West, and how their pictures reflected not simply on storytelling but on the politics and social order of the day. The vases' function in Greek culture and as messengers of style and subject are explained.