Lot 90
90
A PAIR OF SOUTH GERMAN VINE-ROOT AND GILT-COPPER MARRIAGE-CUPS, each with moulded rim engraved with arabesque panels of birds, satyr-masks and animals divided by silhouette portrait medallions, the turned moulded spreading body with naturalistic burl above a nobbled ring-turned baluster shaft and naturalistic base with chevron-bound moulded spreading socle, each with ink inscription to the underside 105, late 16th Century, probably Augsburg

Details
A PAIR OF SOUTH GERMAN VINE-ROOT AND GILT-COPPER MARRIAGE-CUPS, each with moulded rim engraved with arabesque panels of birds, satyr-masks and animals divided by silhouette portrait medallions, the turned moulded spreading body with naturalistic burl above a nobbled ring-turned baluster shaft and naturalistic base with chevron-bound moulded spreading socle, each with ink inscription to the underside 105, late 16th Century, probably Augsburg
4½in. (11.5cm.) diam.; 7¼in. (18.5cm.) high (2)
Provenance
Anonymous sale, Sotheby's London, 4 July 1991, lot 259
Exhibited
London, P & D Colnaghi & Co. Ltd., Objects for a Wunderkammer, 10 June to 31 July 1981, no. 125 (Catalogue, A. González-Palacios ed.,p.262)

Lot Essay

An extremely closely related wedding cup, made for the Geizkofler family in 1583 by Abraham Pfleger and bearing the Augsburg hallmark, was exhibited at Augsburg, Welt um Umbruch, 28 June-28 September 1980, vol II, no. 739, pp. 358-360

The presence of a unicorn on one cup, an allegory of female chastity, would seem to indicate that these marriage-cups were originally conceived as a pair rather than as a double-cup

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