AFA Summer 2020

Antiques & Fine Art 101 2020 Ostrich egg cup (The Ducie Cup), London, England, 1584–1585. Ostrich egg with silver gilt (sterling) mounts. Overall H. 14½, W. 5¼ in. Toledo Museum of Art; Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott (1964.52). Though they had made their way in some numbers to Northern Europe since at least the time of the Crusades in the thirteenth century, ostrich eggs were increasingly in demand as European trade with Africa (in goods as well as enslaved humans) greatly expanded in the sixteenth century. Princes, aristocrats, and wealthy merchants desired them for their cabinets of curiosities, collections representing a “theater of the universe”: the wonders of nature ( naturalia ) and the wonders of human creativity ( artificialia ). The size alone of an ostrich egg marked it for wonder and admiration, as did its connection to the nine-foot-tall bird itself, which had acquired many mythical abilities and associations in the minds of Europeans since before the Middle Ages (for example, they were thought to be able to eat iron and became a symbol of rebirth in Christian belief). But when the impressive eggs were transformed by the skill of the goldsmith into fanciful goblets, these curiosities became doubly prized, combining the best aspects of both nature and humankind to represent “God’s natural order.”