ABSTRACT
Ideas of deception still persist and, in particular, are frequently associated with a particular class of material culture: skeuomorphs. Skeuomorphs are artifacts made from one material to imitate a form more usually made from another. The distrust accorded to skeumorphs can be seen in Childe's definition of them as 'objects, aping in one medium shapes proper to another'. The problem with artistic representations for the ancient Greeks is that they were just that, representations: they either reflected, or misrepresented reality. In the former interpretation the use of old forms could be seen to "trick" people into accepting new materials, it is this latter interpretation that carries more of the sense of the skeuomorph as deceptive. The hyperreal ceramic representations of the French potter Bernard Palissy could be read in the same way as Zeuxis's paintingas mimicking nature through a formal, iconic representation. These creatures were captured alive, immersed in urine or vinegar, coated in grease, and finally pressed into plaster.
