Cup with Turbo marmoratus shell

This exquisite object is a libation vessel of a type that was popular in seventeenth-century German Wunderkammern, or “cabinets of wonders”, with the use of natural objects, and large shells in particular. The mark on the base of the cup is that of Christoph Lencker, who worked in Augsburg in the late-sixteenth/early-seventeenth century.