This cup, with its thin crinkled sides and shiny surface was designed to imitate a metal vessel. The black slip and white paint perhaps indicate a silver vessel which has tarnished (turned black) after reacting with the oxygen in the air.
Pottery of this kind was found in the Kamares Cave in Crete in 1893 by a local shepherd and brought to the museum at Heraklion. There it was seen by John Myres, an archaeologist who had recently excavated similar pottery in Egypt. Since Egyptian chronology was well known, this meant that it could be dated to the early second millennium BCE. When Arthur Evans began excavating at Knossos in 1900, he was able to use ‘Kamares Ware’ as a means to date the levels of the Palace in which this pottery was found.