Kylix with Palmette-Eye Motif, depicting a Reclining Youth Playing the Game of Kottabos

Crafted by the potter Pamphaios and painted by Epiktetos, this is the finest piece of ancient pottery in the AMAM collection, and one of only two known palmette-eye cups decorated by Epiktetos in the world (the other being in the Louvre, Paris). Acquired by the museum in fragments in 1967, the cup had been reassembled when Dietrich von Bothmer, well-known connoisseur and preeminent authority on Greek pottery, visited Oberlin in 1984. Two years later, while examining small pottery fragments from a recent donation to the Getty Museum in Malibu, von Bothmer came across a small piece that he immediately recognized as part of one of the missing sections of Oberlin's cup. The Getty generously donated the fragment to the AMAM in 1988, though it has not been integrated into the cup.

The fragment supplies the "alpha" and "phi" of "egraphsen," the verb of the signature of Epiktetos (whose name appears on the cup's other side), and parts of the legs of the reclining figure on the kylix's front side. The interior of the kylix contains the name of the potter. There, a reclining youth who holds two kylixes is preparing to flick the wine lees at a target as part of a drinking game, called kottabos.

Cups such as this would have been personal to their owner, who would have taken them to parties and dinners. The decorations on this kylix all make reference to the use of the kylix-whether through the game of kottabos, through other party games, such as balancing a kylix on one's arm as does the male figure on one side of the cup, or through the reclining figure who holds a kylix on the other side.