The cup with a cylindrical silver gilt body on three ball feet. The pierced and chased cage-work with birds and foliate scroll decoration, the scroll handles terminating in mythical beast heads, the pull off cover with a rope work border, pierced cage-work and a foliate finial mounted with a silver gilt bee.

This type of cage-work was popular in England during the 1670's and 1680’s and was influenced by the work of German silversmiths earlier in the 17th century.

Another very similar example by Thomas Jenkins, London circa 1670, can be seen in the British Museum, and is illustrated in Douglas Ash, How to Identify English Silver Drinking Vessels 600-1830, G. Bell and Sons, 1964, plate 17b.

Several similar two-handled cups and covers to the present example are known, including at least three whose finials have identical parcel-gilt silver ‘bee and blossom’ pattern finials. One, bearing the maker’s mark only (IB, a mullet between, above a crescent between two pellets, ascribed to Jacob Bodendick), its sleeve pierced and embossed with flowering plants, musical cherubs and birds, was with Commander and Mrs. How in 19442 who compared it with another, similar cup from Lord Swaythling’s collection3 also by Bodendick and with the full London hallmarks for 1668. This cup was among the Swaythling Heirlooms sold in 1924 when its ‘removable silver outer covering’ was described as ‘embossed in high relief with a shepherd and shepherdess, dog, goat and Cupids’;4 its finial was also a cast ‘bee and blossom.’ The sleeve of the third cup, also with the mark ascribed to Bodendick, London, 1668, formerly in the Al-Tajir Collection, is embossed with birds and flowering plants.

The ‘bee and blossom’ of these cups’ finials may well reflect their original function; it is well known that such vessels were used for braggot (a mixture of honey and malt), caudle or some other fortifying beverage commonly given to expectant or new mothers.