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Two-Handled Covered Cup

Shiny silver cup with lid, two handles with leaf designs
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • Shiny silver cup with lid, two handles with leaf designs

Date:

1698–1720

Artist:

Cornelius Kierstede
American, 1674–1757
New York

About this artwork

This luxurious vessel, by one of New York’s foremost early silversmiths, was used to serve syllabub, a sweetened or flavored wine, cider, beer, or ale into which milk was whipped. The cover helped preserve the frothy drink and also, using its three equidistant handles as legs, could be inverted into a stand for the cup. The vessel bears the mark CK, standing for Cornelius Kierstede, a third-generation New York silversmith of Dutch descent. Kierstede opened a shop around 1698 in New York, where he worked, off and on, until moving to New Haven, Connecticut, in the early 1720s. Like the Van Cortlandt family, who commissioned this cup and whose coat of arms it bears, and the Stuyvesant family, whose descendants owned the object until the Art Institute acquired it, the majority of Kierstede’s patrons were wealthy Dutch colonists. This cup is one of four nearly identical pieces made during the same period by Kierstede and two other well-known New York silversmiths. Evolved from English prototypes, all four have the same nearly straight sides, scroll-like handles, and slightly domed cover as well as variations of the embossed acanthus-leaf ornament.

Status

On View, Gallery 165

Department

Arts of the Americas

Artist

Cornelius Kierstede

Title

Two-Handled Covered Cup

Place

New York (Object made in)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

c. 1698–1720

Medium

Silver

Inscriptions

Marked on side of each handle and three times on the lid, in rectangle: CK Engraved on body: Van Cortlandt family arms Engraved on bottom, in a period hand: >M C L< and at a later date: Petrus Stuyvesant/ married/ M.C. Livingston/ 1730 Engraved on underside lip of cover: MCL.

Dimensions

12.7 × 20.3 × 12.7 cm (5 3/8 × 8 5/8 × 5 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Purchased with funds provided by Mrs. James W. Alsdorf, Pauline Seipp Armstrong, Marshall Field, Charles C. Haffner III, Mrs. Burton W. Hales, Mrs. Harold T. Martin, Mrs. C. Phillip Miller, Mr. and Mrs. Milo M. Naeve, Mrs. Eric Oldberg, Mrs. Frank L. Sulzberger, and the Ethel T. Scarborough Fund

Reference Number

1984.1132

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/106538/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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