The decoration on this cup, which features a seated fox, a horse, a griffin and a grazing stag and goat, was made using a roller stamp. The design was repeated around the cup, and just over three repetitions now survive.
Bucchero-ware pottery was produced from the 7th to the 5th centuries BC in Etruria. It was made from local clay fired in a kiln in a strongly reducing atmosphere (without oxygen), which caused a chemical reaction with the iron oxides in the clay, turning the vase black. The surface of the vase was burnished (polished with a wooden tool) before firing, giving it a lustrous sheen. This was just one way in which this type of pottery imitated metal vessels. The earliest Etruscan bucchero was thin-walled, but over time it became heavier.
