The appearance of the so-called Kamaraes ware is unmistakable, with its bright, almost gay, aspect, and the contrast of the colours with the lustrous black ground. The pigments employed are four in number—milky white, yellow ochre, brick-red, and purple-red. These vases are mostly made on the wheel, and the buff-coloured clay is fairly well levigated, as is the slip, on which the pigments are directly laid; its lustre often almost rivals that of the best Hellenic pottery. Mr. Evans found some specimens in 1902 of an extremely delicate character, almost as thin as an egg-shell. The colours are, however, sometimes dull and powdery, and apt to flake away except when fired. The forms are of a Cycladic type, the favourite being a two-handled globular vase with spout, and a pear-shaped one-handled vase, also with a spout[899] (see also Plate XIV.[900]). The decoration is, as has been indicated, plastic as well as pictorial; the relief ornaments are often of an elaborate type, as may be seen in some of Mr. Hogarth’s finds.[901] Some vases are merely covered with knobs, or with a sort of honeycombing in relief[902]; in others toothed or bossed bands are employed, either simply or combined into complex patterns. In any case this plastic element is quite a new departure. The pictorial designs include geometrical and linear patterns, zigzags, network, concentric circles, spirals, and swastikas; leaves, rosettes, and other vegetable forms; fishes, and even in one case a human figure.[903] The chief field of decoration is the shoulder of the vase. Although varying in the extent of their naturalism, the patterns exhibit considerable boldness and power of drawing; they seem to be drawn chiefly from floral or textile sources, and are closely parallel to the Thera vases, but more advanced. Some motives are of Mycenaean character, such as the use of rows of white dots[904]; on the other hand, the style of the fishes and human figure is more like that of the Geometrical vases. Mr. Hogarth notes that metal types of Kamaraes cups appear in the hands of Kefti tributaries in the paintings of the tomb of Rekhmara (about 1550 B.C.), and he even found their Neolithic prototypes at Kephala, near Knossos.[905] He also traces a connection with the early Aegean pottery of Phylakopi in Melos. The Kamaraes pottery can be shown not to have survived the incoming of the new Mycenaean influences, but the patterns rapidly became conventionalised, and are replaced by the new motives of the Mycenaean wares. It may further be noted that fragments of Kamaraes ware have turned up not only in Egypt, as at Kahun (already mentioned), but at Tiryns, in the fifth and sixth Acropolis graves at Mycenae, and at Curium in Cyprus.