Two-Handled Cup and Cover

In 1760 silversmith Thomas Heming was appointed principal goldsmith to King George III. In 1766, Heming produced his best-known work, a thirty-piece toilet service for Caroline Mathilda, the daughter of Frederick, Prince of Wales and wife of Christian VII of Denmark. The set included a mirror, a scent bottle, a brush, and a comb. Heming’s craftsmanship earned him numerous other important commissions, including an order from the Russian imperial court.

The two-handled cup and cover was a particularly popular silver form in England from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century. Such cups were used for ornament or display, as well as for special or ceremonial occasions as prizes or awards. Only seven examples of two-handled cups executed by Thomas Heming are known. All have a spreading foot and a short stem, on which the cup rests. The Art Museum’s cup is a bombé form: curved, bulging, and convex. Its handles are cast with figures of youthful bacchantes facing in opposite directions.

Heming was an innovator in design and style who revived the early Rococo by using motifs that had appeared on English examples earlier in the century. This cup is ornately embellished with cast and applied relief decorations in the form of encircling fruit-bearing vines, a favorite motif of Heming’s that appears on other cups as well.