Coconut Cup with Biblical Scenes from the Life of David

Carving: Netherlands; mounts: London

silvermetalwork

Date

1577-78

Medium

Gilded silver and coconut shell

Dimensions

22.9 × 11.2 × 11.6 cm (9 × 4 3/8 × 4 9/16 in.)

Museum

Art Institute of Chicago

Location

Chicago, IL

Credit

Gift of Mrs. Stanley Keith

Coconuts, a precious curio from the New World, were so highly prized in Europe during the early modern era that they were fashioned into elegant vessels by silversmiths. They made noteworthy additions to princely curiosity cabinets and may also have served a medicinal purpose. John Parkinson’s Theatrum Botanicum (1640), for instance, credits wine drunk from a coconut with curing colic, epilepsy, and rheumatoid disorders.

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