The sudden appearance of elegant, single glass beakers in the eighteenth century may be explained by the custom of drinking water with a draft of thick, sweet, hot chocolate.

The technique of forming objects on a lathe, or turning, reached a high degree of complexity in the Renaissance and Baroque eras, when French, Italian, and Central European workshops produced paper-thin hollowed-out shapes from single blocks of ivory. Clerics and noblemen embraced turning as a hobby. Among the rulers who collected masterpieces of turning for their Kunstkammern and practiced the art themselves were the Holy Roman Emperors Maximilian II (r. 1564–76), Rudolf II (r. 1576–1612), and Ferdinand III (r. 1619–37). The eccentric form of this cup exemplifies Mannerist taste in Central Europe, though the most challenging aspect of its creation was concocting the lacy hollows that form the stem and spire.

This sampler features an upper and lower case alphabet, flowers (pansies, roses, lilies, and tulips), potted fruit trees and buttonhole-stitched edges. The motifs border all four sides and point toward the middle of the work, in which is stitched a floral wreath, typical of German samplers through the nineteenth century. The date on the sampler, 1691, is presumably the year in which the work was completed. It is stitched in such a way that it reads "1691" both upside down and right-side up. The sampler has the square shape, buttonhole stitched edges, and center-facing flower sprig and vase motifs typical of seventeenth-century samplers from Nuremberg, Germany.

The technique of forming objects on a lath, or turning, reached a high degree of complexity in the Renaissance and Baroque eras, when French, Italian, and Central European workshops produced paper-thin hollowed-out shapes from single blocks of ivory. Clerics and noblemen embraced turning as a hobby. Among the rulers who collected masterpieces of turning for their Kunstkammern and practiced the art themselves were the Holy Roman Emperors Maximilian II (r. 1564–76), Rudolf II (r. 1576–1612), and Ferdinand III (r. 1619–37). The eccentric form of one of these cups exemplifies Mannerist taste in Central Europe, though the most challenging aspect of its creation was concocting the lacy hollows that form the stem and spire.

1735~, Nuremberg

1735~, Nuremberg