Gallery Title
Gallery Title
Norwich silver coconut cup
Accession Number NWHCM : 1936.77 : D
Description
A Charles I Norwich silver mounted coconut cup; Norwich, 1641-2, maker's mark unknown (a tower incuse), the nut enclosed by three plain silver straps hinged to the everted silver lip-band with scalloped lower edge; cup supported by a plain silver baluster stem with scalloped calyx; also scalloped juncture with the conical foot, which is engraved with the coat of arms of Calthorpe impaling that of Lewknor; and underneath with a 'B' below a crown (1) and scratched 1641. made 1641-1642 for the marriage of James Calthorpe, High Sherriff, to Katharine Lewknor in Norwich Cathedral. This is the only recorded example of Norwich silver with the maker's mark a tower incuse.
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Coconuts were among the new fashionable foods available for the rich in Britain in the seventeenth century as a result of rapidly expanding international trade. Their shells were also prized, as exotic works of art, and were sometimes believed to neutralise poison if used as drinking vessels. Coconut shells could be polished, mounted and carved. This vessel may have been one of a pair. It was made to celebrate the marriage of James Calthorpe, High Sheriff of Norfolk, to Katherine Lewknor in Norwich Cathedral in 1642, and the silver mount bears both their coats of arms. This coconut shell cup is the only known Norwich silver mounted example. It forms part of a more general European fashion in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries to mount exotic natural materials like shells, mother of pearl or ostrich eggs in elaborate precious metal mounts. This represented a union of the wonders of nature and the skills of man.