The late museum curator Kurt Luckner had recommended Toledo buy the kalpis for $90,000, and its acquisition was a coup for Toledo because the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York had also wanted it at the time.

The 2,500-year-old water vessel, or kalpis, has been on display at the Ohio museum since 1982, when it was purchased from an antiquities dealer out of Switzerland.

Kalpis, kal′pis, n. a three-handled water-vase.