Graeco-Phoenician pottery is, as has been said, exclusively wheel-made, and almost always supplied with a “base-ring.” Reliefs and incised ornaments are never found, but instances of moulded wares, combining the vase with the statuette, are not wanting, especially among the later varieties. The designs are usually painted in a non-lustrous black pigment, varied with the use of opaque purple and white, corresponding to the pigments employed by Hellenic potters. The ground is either white, without any polish or slip—as in the painted white ware of the Bronze Age and sub-Mycenaean fabrics—or else covered with a more or less lustrous red slip, varying from a bright orange or deep red to a dark brown (the latter usually with unpolished surface). Purple is employed only on the white wares, white only on the red. The typical decoration of the white wares consists of lotos-patterns, tree-ornaments, and water-fowl. Generally speaking, these are earlier than the red. On the lustrous red wares the decoration is usually confined to simple patterns of concentric circles, vertical and horizontal, maeander crosses, lozenges and triangles. Fig. 75, from Curium, is a typical specimen of the more elaborate types, and another is shown in Plate XIII. The forms are at first very varied, but gradually crystallise into some half-dozen main types: dishes, bowls on stems, lekythi with one or two handles, jugs with globular bodies, and large amphorae with vertical side-handles. Of these the jug is by far the commonest. Among the peculiar forms in the earlier tombs (eighth to sixth centuries) may be mentioned _aski_ in the form of birds or oxen (the latter a Mycenaean survival), and a kind of flask with barrel-shaped body, on which the decoration of concentric circles, etc., does not follow the usual horizontal system of classical pottery, but is disposed vertically, in contradiction to all artistic feeling (see Plate XIII.). The circles are often very fine and close, and were produced by holding a brush full of paint close to the surface of the vase as it was turned on the wheel. The drawing of the circles in different planes, without regard to the lines of the vase, was easily effected by placing it in different positions. In the period of Hellenic importations the principal form is the jug with ovoid body and modelled spout, and flat dishes are also common. * * * * *