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Lot 319
  • 319

An Ottoman silver-gilt mounted coconut drinking vessel, Turkey, circa 1550

Estimate
25,000 - 35,000 GBP
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Description

  • wood, metal
of hemispherical form supported on a narrow baluster foot with ringed splayed base and bulbous fluted moulding, the cup secured by four silver-gilt strap mounts and silver-gilt rim, engraved with overlapping split and full palmettes, the rim with Greek inscription

Catalogue Note

inscriptions

Around the outside of the rim in Greek:

'It is a beautiful cup that contains sweet wine / pour wine, fill it up and let it go around.'

During the sixteenth century coconut shells were a highly prized form of exotica. Sourced from Asia and traded via Lisbon and Venice, they were often mounted as reliquaries or vessels and were believed to possess prophylactic qualities. The deep cup mounted on a narrow splayed base with suspension straps derives from an earlier European prototype, an eleventh-century chalice of similar form is in the treasury of San Marco in Venice, see The Treasury of San Marco Venice, 1984, p.160. A seventeenth-century mounted coconut cup with comparable decoration is in the Museum of the Holy Monastery, Patmos. Unlike our example, however, this was produced by a Khiva workshop. It i🔥s likely that this cup was produced in an Ottoman workshop and gifted to a Greek dignit🌌ary following the invasion of Constantinople.