Even in the Geometric period which preceded it (p. 26) (the sparing ornamentation of which is in contrast with the Dipylon pottery and its greater delight in using the brush) metallic influence can be traced; the simple running spiral certainly comes from incised bronzes. The delicate two-handled cups closely connected with the Geometric style (Fig. 23), with their well-cleansed clay, improved glaze colour baked black to red, and the reduction of the walls almost to the thinness of paper, can only have been produced in competition with the metal industry; and as a matter of fact delicate silver vases of the same shape have been found along with the clay copies of them in Etruscan graves. The lower part of the cups is at first painted black, but soon it is surrounded with the circle of rays, which according to the ideas of the new period emphasizes and makes clear the tectonic character of that part of the vase. This motive also appears in the Geometric decoration of the flat-bottomed jugs (Fig. 33), the unguent pots which show Cyprian influence in their oldest globular shape, the kylikes, round boxes and other shapes, though not always in the typical place, and often also combined with other ornaments (Figs. 30 and 32). In spite of its Geometrical treatment and its truly Greek close combination with the system of decoration, it does not disown the impulse it owes to Oriental patterns (p. 30). The Protocorinthian style also introduced its doubling (Fig. 32), which still survives in the 6th century (Fig. 98). The cable pattern, borrowed as has been shown from Oriental metal-work, drives out the ‘S’s’ and the running spiral. As a handle ornament it gets a rich enlargement (Fig. 32), the fine stylization of which, no doubt, was first produced in metal industry. Of the greatest importance is the adoption of loops, volutes, running tendrils and friezes of arcs, which in combination with the palmette appear on the wall of the vase or as an upper stripe, and from simple, often loosely stylized beginnings, expand with the help of the lotus-flower into a fine loop and flower ornament (‘Rankengeschling’), as in Figs. 31, 32, 35. That this ornamentation, in spite of its rigid stylization, was felt by the Greeks to belong to the living vegetable world, is shown _e.g._ by the volute-complex, behind which the hunter (on the lowest stripe of Fig. 31) waits to catch the hare, as well as behind the naturally drawn bush (on Fig. 36); this shows that the ‘volute tree’ (Fig. 34) flanked by two sphinxes, is thought of as a real tree. On the other hand the ornaments in the field are quite as meaningless as in the older style: to those used by Geometric artists are now added the hook spiral, and the rosette treated as a dotted star, two ornaments we have seen already on the Ram jug (Fig. 28); at first they are independent and can be used to form friezes, later they become less and less prominent (Figs. 32 and 34, cp. also Fig. 28).