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In the early Minoan period, following on the miserable Stone Age (ssss1) the Cretans must have laid the foundation of their riches, if an inference may be drawn from the stone vases and goldsmith’s work of Mochlos. The ceramic art enters on two paths, which have a future before them. The vases were hitherto unpainted and only incised. Now either they are covered with brilliant black paint (‘varnish’) on which the old patterns are painted in tenacious white colour, a technique which celebrated its triumph in the subsequent period, or the vases are left in the colour of the clay and painted with bands of ‘varnish’; to this so-called ‘Mycenean’ technique belongs the whole late period (ssss1). There is a special group of flamed ware, the patterns of which, like much that is Minoan, are far nearer to modern applied art than to Greek. Even in the first half of this period the kiln seems already to be known; the potter’s wheel appears in the second, which is characterized by the first appearance of curvilinear patterns, especially the wave series and running spiral.