The shapes of the earliest Cypriote pottery are purely indigenous and very characteristic, but the technique may very likely have been learned from elsewhere; in regard to which it should be noted that as it is invariably hand-made, an Egyptian origin is altogether precluded, owing to the early use of the wheel for pottery in that country (see pp. 7, 206). For the most part the forms are characterised by a tendency to fantastic and unsymmetrical modelling, with a preference for complicated forms, such as two or three vases joined together. Others again imitate gourds or vessels of straw and basket-work, such as are used in Cyprus at the present day. They have no foot or “base-ring” to stand upon; and another characteristic is the frequent absence of handles, the place of which is supplied by small ears, by means of which the vase was hung up or carried by cords.[821] Sometimes these ears cover the whole outline of the vase. The plastic principle is always popular in the Bronze-Age pottery, and manifests itself in more than one direction. From the first it is exhibited in the tendency, so common in early art, to combine the vase and the statuette,[822] a tendency which is even stronger in the pottery of Hissarlik. It also takes the form of designs in relief covering the surface of, or moulded to, the vase. In one point Cyprus is manifestly in advance of the rest of the ancient world, and that is, in the decoration of the pottery. Here, in fact, we meet with the first attempts at painted vases, combined with the employment of a fine bright red or polished black slip to cover the surface. In the earlier varieties the designs, when they occur, are confined to simple rectilinear geometrical patterns incised through the slip before baking; but these are soon supplemented by the employment, first of a matt-white pigment, secondly of a brown-black paint obtained from the native umber. The only other locality in which painted vases occur at so early a period is the island of Thera (see below, p. 260).