This Black on Red jug is decorated with a large aquatic bird in the so-called Free Field Style. Figural decoration on Cypriot pottery first appeared in the Bronze Age and continued to occur sporadically until the Cypro- Geometric III period. The real flourish of the pictorial style was in the Cypro-Archaic I period, when it became predominant in vase- painting. The Free Field Style developed as a distinctive type of decoration in the eastern part of the island during the Cypro-Archaic I and II periods (8th-7th c. BC). In this style abstract patterns are rare or totally absent; the painter –liberated from the constraints of the friezes and panels of the Geometric period– presents a single pictorial motif or composition on the body of the vase, freely executed. The preferred vase shape for such type of decoration was the trefoil-mouth jug, while the most popular subjects were human figures, animals, birds (often with a fish in the beak), standardized flowers as well as various combinations of these. Vases in the Free Field Style were usually decorated in White-Painted or Bichrome technique. The llustrated jug is in Black on Red Ware and is, therefore, a rare example of the style.