Powdered sulfides of copper, silver and lead, heated and used to make a bluish-black plastic substance applied to metalwork. The material was soft; it was cast into the cut-out pattern on the object and polished flat. It was used particular to decorate the inlaid daggers of shaft grave circles at Mycenae. The art of chasing out lines or forms, and inlaying a black composition was probably well known to the Greeks. The Byzantines compounded silver, lead, sulfur, and copper, and laid it on the silver in a powder, then put it through a furnace, where it melted and incorporated with the solid metal. Germanic and Anglo-Saxon metalworkers also used the technique. Objects decorated with niello, called nielli, are usually small in scale. During the Renaissance, at the height of its popularity, the technique was widely used for the embellishment of liturgical objects and for the decoration of cups, boxes, knife handles, and belt buckles.