Lip Cup facts for kids

Lip cups are a special kind of ancient Greek drinking cup. They were made in Athens starting around the middle of the 500s BC. These cups are part of a group called Little-master cups.

What Makes Lip Cups Special?

Lip cups look a bit like another type of cup called a Gordion cup. But the main difference is their "lip" or rim. This part was very clear and stood out from the rest of the cup.

How They Looked

Lip cups had tall feet with wide bases. The early ones often had hollow, cone-shaped feet.

An Attic lip cup made by the potter Xenokles, around 540-530 BC. You can see it at the Antikensammlung Berlin.

The Decorations

Artists painted the lip or rim of these cups. Usually, you would see one to three figures in the middle of the front and back. These figures were painted right onto the clay. It was rare to see a full story from myths on them. Sometimes, the lip was left plain with no decoration at all.

More decorations were found near the handles. There were almost always words written between the palmettes (a type of fan-shaped design) near the handles. There was also often a painted stripe near the top edge. Sometimes, instead of palmettes, you might see small animals or people.

The words on the cups could be:

• Sayings or mottos.
• Toasts for drinking.
• Just random letters that didn't mean anything! These were probably just for decoration.

Inside the cup, there were often round paintings of figures. These were sometimes surrounded by flame-like patterns with white dots. In some cases, the lip had plant designs instead of figures.

Why Two Kinds of Cups?

For a long time, two types of cups, lip cups and band cups, were made at the same time. We don't know exactly why. Maybe each type had its own good points.

For example, it might have been nicer to drink from the plain black rim of a band cup. But the strong ridge under the rim of a lip cup might have stopped drinks from spilling better! Lip cups were also a bit harder to make.

Famous Artists Who Made Lip Cups

Many skilled artists created these beautiful cups. Some well-known names include:

• Tleson
• Sakonides
• Hermogenes
• Epitimos
• Xenokles
• The Xenokles Painter
• The Taleides Painter
• The Phrynos Painter
• Phrynos

See also

In Spanish: Copa de labios para niños