Starkly isolated against a background without any subsidiary ornament, a bird hovers beside a foliate spray. This so-called free field style was adopted by a small group of vase-painters working mostly in Southern and Eastern Cyprus at the end of the eighth century and beginning of the seventh. The rich use of black and red glaze on a cream ground has given rise to the term bichrome ware. Birds in the ancient Greek world were considered divinely inspired, oracular; they were also sometimes kept as pets. Migrating birds, particularly the swallow and its appearance in spring, regularly caught the imagination of both poet and artist. It is not known what the associations (if any) between birds and wine-jugs may have been. They may have included spring-time, when the birds returned and the new wine was first opened; and not necessarily articulate song -- as the symposiast drank more, he became less coherent.