SIGNED BY TLESON AS POTTER AND ATTRIBUTED TO THE TLESON PAINTER, CIRCA 540 B.C.

Each side of this cup is inscribed in Greek, reading: "Tleson son of Nearchos made me.” Most of the cups signed by Tleson as potter are the work of the Tleson Painter. According to J. Boardman (p. 60, Athenian Black Figure Vases), "Tleson is the classic Little Master, no doubt painter and potter, and always naming his father, the painter Nearchos, in his signatures." The tondo of this cup has a cock and a hen facing right, with a flying bird above. Cocks and hens, individually or paired, are frequent on the Tleson Painter’s cups, either on the exterior of lip- or band-cups, or in the tondo. For another cup by the Tleson Painter with a cock and hen in the tondo, see the fragment now in the National Museum, Athens (C. Roebuck, “Pottery from the North Slope of the Acropolis, 1937-1938,” in Hesperia, vol. 9, no. 2, fig. 30/151).