Inscription, the Embossed Surface and the Ceremonial Sip: The Traubenpokal of Bernkastel-Kues, 1661–2001

Abstract

This article relates the biography of a seventeenth-century gilt-silver cup from its origins in Nuremberg in the 1630s to its use in civic drinking rituals in the small town of Bernkastel-Kues on the Moselle River during the twentieth century. It investigates in particular two of the cup’s physical features, its 1661 inscription and the lobate forms populating its surface, which facilitate different modes of social relation and offer distinct orientations to permanence and the historical past. Recounting the cup’s history over centuries occasions discussion of the shifting significance of ceremonial drinking (Ehrentrunk) and council plate or civic plate (Ratssilber) in German cities and towns.