Coconut cups were known in the ancient world, although no examples have survived. The earliest reference to a coconut cup in England is in a will of 1254, but the earliest surviving English examples are from slightly before 1500, as with those in
New College, Oxford, and
Gonville and Caius, Cambridge. In 1508 New College owned seven coconut cups. In an inventory of 1532 of the stock of
Robert Amadas, goldsmith to
Henry VIII, there were "black nuts", valued at the same as silver-gilt by weight. The records of
London's goldsmith's guild for the 14th and 15th centuries have several disputes arising from coconut cups being made by the wrong people, or with the wrong materials. They were especially made in the German-speaking world, where they continued to be made well into the Baroque 17th century. One is shown in the painting
A Goldsmith in his Shop, by
Petrus Christus, 1449, set in
Bruges (now
Metropolitan Museum of Art). The "rather plain" coconut cup is on a shelf to the right of his head. Some appear among other luxurious objects in
pronkstillevens ("ostentatious
still-lifes") in
Dutch Golden Age paintings, from about the 1640s onwards. There were older traditions of luxurious drinking cups with bowls in organic materials mounted in metal, especially the
mazer type, often made of
burr maple, giving somewhat similar decorative patterns in the wood when polished. in 1780 by the Royal Exchange Assurance Some 17th-century cups were decorated with Brazilian or other tropical scenes, which has been connected to
Dutch Brazil, a small and short-lived colony (1630–1654) or other areas of
Dutch colonization of the Americas. Coconuts presumably became much more easily available in England in the 18th century, helped by their spread to the New World in the early 16th century, and there are many cups, that are typically a good deal simpler, on a short stem and without much carving; very often the shell is just polished. By this stage a shell was cheaper than a bowl made of silver, which has contributed to a higher survival rate for coconut cups than those in precious metal, as they had a lower
recycling value, and were less likely to be melted down. According to Kathleen Kennedy, "together, coconut cups and mazers are almost the only fifteenth-century plate to remain extant at Oxford and Cambridge colleges today". A Georgian example in the
National Museum of Scotland has a wooden stem and foot, the silver restricted to bands around the rim and bowl. It is inscribed "The prize of butts at
Kilwinning made and sett out by Robert Fullarton of Bartanholme. Esqr. For the year 1746", a relatively economical
sports trophy for a local shooting contest in
Ayrshire, Scotland. They continued to be made in the 19th century, and into the 20th, with an extravagant
art nouveau example of 1915 by the German metal artist
Ernst Riegel that is now in the
Germanisches Nationalmuseum in
Nuremberg, Germany. Coconut cups with the nut as the body of an
owl, and the head removable for drinking were also sometimes given as prizes for Continental shooting contests (with a
crossbow in early ones), as owls were in these released to get other birds to rise up and mob them, and be shot. Nuts also made the torsos of various other animals, mostly boars, to which heads and feet were added; animal-shaped cups were mostly a Germanic style. The
coco chocolatero is a mainly South American version, somewhat less expensive, mostly used for
drinking chocolate. There are traditional uses of the
coconut shell cup in areas where the tree grows naturally. Modern Western examples, normally without stems or feet, are associated with "long"
cocktails, and are often ceramic or plastic imitations of the nut form. File:A Goldsmith in his Shop MET DT711.jpg|
A Goldsmith in his Shop, by
Petrus Christus, 1449, in
Bruges; a coconut cup to the right of his head. File:Church treasury, St. Heribert, Cologne-40890.jpg|
Reliquary-cup of
St Heribert,
Cologne, c. 1520 File:Cup with Cover.jpg|
Silver-gilt, by Hans van Amsterdam, 1533, Metropolitan Museum of Art File:Coconut Cup with Scenes from the Life of David, 1577-1578, England or Netherlands, silver gilt and coconut or carob shell - Art Institute of Chicago - DSC09697.JPG|Coconut Cup with Scenes from the Life of David, 1577–1578, England or Netherlands, silver gilt, Art Institute of Chicago File:Cornelis de Bye - Coconut Cup with Old Testament Scenes - Walters 571046 - Side C (cropped).jpg|
Cornelis de Bye, Coconut Cup with Old Testament Scenes, here
Susannah and the Elders, before 1598. File:Mounted Carved Coconut Goblet Decorated with Scenes from the Story of Samson, Hans Peter Muller, Germany, c. 1600, coconut, gilt silver - Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University - DSC01364.jpg|Cup with Scenes from the Story of Samson, Hans Peter Muller, Germany, c. 1600, silver-gilt, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard File:Grotesque wild boar, Caspar Beutmuller the Elder, Germany, Nuremberg, 1603-1609, coconut, gilt silver, cold paint - Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York City - DSC06942.jpg|Grotesque wild boar cup, Caspar Beutmuller the Elder,
Nuremberg, 1603–1609, silver-gilt and cold paint,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York File:Neues Grünes Gewölbe Kokosnusspokal vor 1656.jpg|Cup carved with Brazilian scenes, c. 1656,
Neues Grünes Gewölbe,
Dresden File:Carved coconut, probably The Netherlands; silver mount, probably England, 1 - Coconut Cup - 1977.77 - Cleveland Museum of Art (cropped).tif|17th-century
tankard with hinged lid, and 3 tropical scenes. Carving probably Dutch, the silver mounts probably English File:Covered cup made from coconut, by Heinrich Mannlich, Augsburg, 1688 AD, coconut, gilt silver mountings - Landesmuseum Württemberg - Stuttgart, Germany - DSC03438.jpg|Heinrich Mannlich, Augsburg, 1688, coconut, silver-gilt,
Landesmuseum Württemberg,
Stuttgart File:Pokal av svarvad och polerad kokosnöt - Skoklosters slott - 92169.tif|Neoclassical elegance, silver-gilt,
Stockholm 1809 File:Cup, drinking (51360097288) (cropped).jpg|Cup with
pewter mounts,
New Zealand, c. 1849 File:Coco chocolatero (cropped).JPG|
Coco chocolatero, probably Mexico, with
brass? mounts File:Coconut goblet, Ernst Riegel, Cologne, 1915, coconut, silver, enamel - Germanisches Nationalmuseum - Nuremberg, Germany - DSC03138.jpg|
Ernst Riegel, Cologne, 1915, coconut, silver, enamel,
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg ==See also==