, used by the
Chenghua Emperor (d. 1487) and his consort for both tea and wine; some 3 inches across, these are now the most expensive cups in the world. Cups have been used since the
Stone Age and have been found at archeological sites throughout the world. A large number of the earliest cups are excavated from burials, and may have held offerings or supplies for the afterlife. Cups do not feature strongly in the earliest pottery found in most areas; the wares were thick and heavy, as were the carved stone vessels found in several early cultures. Probably cups in organic materials that have now decomposed, such as wood,
bamboo and dried
gourds were widely used. Large shells and birds' eggs have been used in some areas almost up to the present. Very simple single-use
kulhar cups in unglazed
terracotta, and sometimes unfired clay, are still used in
South Asia, now mainly at tea stalls, and are very similar to those found at sites of the Bronze Age
Indus Valley Civilization. The
Bell Beaker culture, is an important
archaeological culture named after the distinctive inverted-bell pottery
beaker cups it used, marking the beginning of the
European Bronze Age from around 2800 BC. The
Ringlemere Cup is a solid gold cup, with handle, from around 1600 BC, with the
Rillaton Gold Cup one of two such cups known from England, with a handful of other locations and materials (such as the
Hove amber cup) making up the "unstable" (round-bottomed) cups in precious materials from the Bronze Age. in gold, BC Animal horns must often have been used as cups from very early on, and the
rhyton is a cup that imitates their shape, to a greater or lesser degree, in metal or pottery. It was the general elite type of cup throughout the Mediterranean in the
Iron Age, from Greece to
Ancient Persia and beyond. Only some had feet or bases that allowed them to be rested on a flat surface. Large numbers were decorated with or as animal heads, or terminated in the figure of an animal. Other than the rhyton, ancient Greek drinking cup shapes were mostly very wide and shallow bowls, usually on short stems and with two handles, generally oriented horizontally, along the same plane as the mouth of the cup, rather than at 90 degrees to it, as in modern
teacups. Survivals in
ancient Greek pottery are numerous, and often brilliantly painted, but all probably were made also in silver, where survivals are extremely rare, as grave robbers did not bother with pottery. The most important shapes are the
kylix,
kantharos,
skyphos,
lip cup, and the breast-shaped
mastos with no base. The
Roman Empire used cups throughout Europe, with "goblet"-type shapes with shortish stems, or none, preferred for luxury examples in silver, like the
Warren Cup, or
Roman glass, such as the
Lycurgus Cup in color-changing glass, or the spectacular carved-glass
cage cups. By the 2nd century AD even the wealthy tended to prefer drinking from glass, as adding no taste to the drink. An ancient shape of cup in various parts of
Eurasia was the "flanged cup" with either one or two flat horizontal strips attached to part of the top of the cup, acting as handles. These are found as
grave goods in elite burials from around the
Warring States Period (c. 475 to 221 BC), in Chinese
lacquerware (wood coated with resin from a tree) with two flanges at the sides of an ovoid cup. These are also called "eared cups" (耳杯) and "winged goblets". A form with a flange on only one side appears in ancient Persian silver, and then later in
Chinese porcelain, apparently gradually developing into a shape for brush-washers on the calligrapher's desk. Most ancient types of cup from the
Americas were pottery, but around the Gulf of Mexico, Native American societies used the shells of the
Horse conch for drinking cups, among other purposes. The tall, decorated and slightly waisted
qiru or keru of
Andean civilizations first appears in the
Early Intermediate Period (100–600 AD). They seem to have been high-status objects.
Maya elites drank from elaborately painted pottery beakers such as the
Fenton Vase and
Princeton Maya Vase with God L. In what is now the south-eastern US, traces of
Yaupon tea containing
caffeine have been found in pottery cups of an unusual shape: straight-sided, with a single thick spike as a handle near the top, opposite a slight pouring lip. In the
Early Middle Ages glass remained in production in northern Europe, especially Germany, probably as a luxury material.
Anglo-Saxon glass had several types of cup, most shared with continental areas, including "palm cups" with no flat bottom,
claw beakers, glass horns, and different types of beaker. In the European
Middle Ages the shapes of most ordinary cups were closer to
mugs,
tankards, and
goblets rather than modern cups, in wood, pottery, or sometimes
boiled leather. But the elite preferred cups with stems, and often covers, in metal, with glass a less common alternative. Large "ceremonial" or feasting cups, sometimes called
grace cups or "welcome cups", and
drinking horns, including
ivory, with metal mounts, were important prestige pieces, typically too large to drink from all evening, so passed around or drunk from once. The name for the very wide ancient Greek wine-cup
kylix ended up via Latin as
chalice, typically a handle-less goblet in metal, used in the
Catholic mass, but also a secular shape. Many individual examples have served both secular and liturgical uses over their history. tea cup and saucer in the Western style with handle; 1745; diameter: 10.2 cm. The deep saucer is typical of the period By the end of the Middle Ages
glass was becoming a much cheaper material, and over the
Early Modern Period it replaced pottery and other materials as the norm for cups intended for cold drinks, especially wine and beer. The "wine cup" that had been a major prestige category since
classical antiquity was largely replaced by the
wineglass, and
cups for beer went the same way.
Timothy Schroder places this change in England around the end of the 17th century, though others put it nearer the beginning The
OED records the first dated use in English of "glass" as a term for a vessel, rather than just the material, in 1393-4. A new wave of hot drinks came to dominate the range of cups. Chinese and Japanese cups have been shaped as small, rather wide, bowls for some 2,000 years, smaller versions of the shape used for eating and serving food. As well as the
Chinese porcelain that very gradually overtook it,
lacquer is a prestige material. The same shapes are typically used in East Asia for both tea and wine or
sake, and when they appeared in Europe in the 16th century, this shape was initially used for locally made cups for the new drinks of
tea and
coffee. By the early 18th century, the European taste for handles on cups, strongly evident from antiquity, reasserted itself and a single vertical handle was added to a slightly more upright Chinese-style bowl to create both the very similar forms of the Western
teacup and
coffee cup, as well as a
saucer. This was initially rather deeper than modern saucers, as it was considered usual to pour the hot liquid into the saucer to cool it slightly before drinking. Apart from a more shallow saucer the essential elements of these two forms in many contemporary examples have changed little since the mid-18th century. European porcelain manufacturers encouraged the development of different sizes of cup, and shapes of pot, for tea and coffee services. The 20th century brought the
plastic cup, in both disposable and permanent washable forms, and the
paper cup, normally disposable. Materials such as processed
bamboo have also come into use. File:Rillaton gold cup.jpg|The
Rillaton gold cup,
Cornwall, perhaps c. 1700 BC.
British Museum Lotiform Cup MET DP112599.jpg|Ancient Egyptian
lotiform cup; 1295-1185 BC; faience; height: 15 cm, diameter: 9.1 cm File:Greek - Black-figure "Mastos" with Combat Scenes - Walters 48223 - View A.jpg|Greek
black-figure mastos, ca. 530 BC, with combat scenes, a form of "unstable cup" named and modelled after a female breast Greece, 6th Century BC - Siana Cup - 1965.78 - Cleveland Museum of Art.tif|Ancient Greek
kylix; 575-550 BC;
black-figure; diameter: 26.8 cm, overall: 14.1 cm File:Claw beaker from Ringmere Farm BM 2005.12-5.1.jpg|
Claw beaker in
Anglo-Saxon glass from the
Ringlemere barrow, c. 400 to 600 AD File:Falcon warrior Spiro Brooklyn.jpg|"Falcon warrior" shell cup, from the
Spiro Mounds, eastern
Oklahoma, 1200-1500 Beaker MET DP343116 (cropped).jpg|Silver beaker, possibly Norwegian, second half of the 17th century, silver, overall: 9.2 × 8.3 cm Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory - Cup and Saucer - 1998.412 - Cleveland Museum of Art.tif|Sèvres
cabinet cup and saucer, decorated with
Gothic Revival ornament; 1827; porcelain; overall: 8.2 x 10 cm File:Kolkata 43, cups (24820004525).jpg|Old
kulhar and new
paper cups at a "tea stand" in
Kolkata, India in 2015 ==Cultural significance and use==