Welcome Cup of the Journeymen Pewterers' Guild of Lubeck, German, dated 1717

Tall pewter standing cup, cast and inlaid with brass, the body of cylindrical form recessed in the middle, the stem with gadrooned supports top and bottom and a flattened knop, the foot of flattened dome form on 3 ball feet, the lid with an arcade of spiralling pillars and a gadrooned dome top with finial in the form of a man bearing a shield and with arm positioned to support a banner. The cup is decorated with inlaid brass emulating contemporary silver-gilt and niello drinking wares.

Port Bequest

This cup was made for the Pewterers' Journeymen's Guild of Lübeck in 1717. It came to the Museum as part of the Port Bequest in 1930. Its history prior to that is unknown.

Welcome cups were displayed on buffets at civic dinners. This cup was made for the Pewterers' Journeymen's Guild of Lübeck. After their apprenticeships, German pewterers had to embark on a further seven to nine years as journeymen, before they could become masters. They travelled abroad to enhance their skills and acquire new designs. Journeymen's guilds looked after their interests and regulated their behaviour.

The manufacture and distribution of pewter was controlled in Europe by the civic guilds. The earliest pewterers’ guild was that of Nuremberg, which was established in 1285. Nuremberg was especially celebrated for its metal wares and it is not surprising that some of the earliest guilds controlling the metal trade should have been established there. The pewterers’ guild in Paris was also an early foundation, being established before 1300. At their zenith before 1600, the pewterers’ guilds controlled every aspect of the trade, from purchasing the raw materials to maintaining the quality of the metal and managing the apprenticeship. They sometimes had civic responsibilities beyond their craft, such as the upkeep of a local church, and they were often patronised by a saint whose life had in some way been associated with their trade.

Some of the most interesting and monumental wares made in pewter are the drinking vessels used by the craft guilds of Germany. German tankards were widely used for toasts and their decoration often reflects this custom. For example, it was customary to toast the saints and apostles and many German tankards are engraved with their images, or have religious medallions set in the centre of the base. Another popular German toast was the ‘Minnetrincken’ - the toast to absent friends. The vessels were of various forms, the large standing cup with cover being the most common. These standing cups often have a figure on the cover, dressed in the clothing of the craft of the particular guild, such as a miner or a shipwright, and holding a banner decorated with the title of the guild or its coat of arms.

Guild cups are usually of monumental size as they had to be large enough to hold sufficient liquid for the entire livery to drink. They also served as centrepieces for the table. Very large tankards were used for the drinking ceremonies of the guilds. These are heavy enough when empty but when filled could not possibly be handed round. They were known as ‘schliefkanne’ - literally, a ‘pot that has to be dragged’ - and would be filled with beer for the livery when an apprentice had served his time and was made ‘free’ of the Company. In Germany, guild cups were known as ‘Wilkomm’ cups - ‘welcome’ cups - and they were used for special toasts associated with the guilds. They could be simple two-handled cups, passed from hand to hand, or standing cups with covers. Toasts were often very formal. First of all, the covered cup would be handed to the Master of the Guild. The warden would then turn to his neighbour who would remove the cover and stand aside, theoretically to protect the drinker from attack. The drinker then raised the cup, proposed the toast, wiped his lip with a napkin. The cover was then replaced and passed to the next in line, and so on. The larger the vessel, the more difficult this was to do - especially if a cup and cover, which has no handles, was used and if hot spiced wine was the beverage. The whole toasting process demanded a certain amount of practice and skill if one was to perform the various actions without dropping the cup or cover or forgetting one’s lines.

German cups show considerable ingenuity in their design. In addition to the formal cup and cover, or large tankard, guilds often used drinking vessels in a shape peculiar to their individual crafts. A shoemakers’ guild would have a cup in the form of a shoe (1333-1872), a hatter’s guild a cup formed as a hat, a shipwright’s guild, a ship. The variety of designs is considerable. One characteristic shared by guild pewter is the abundance of names and dates engraved all over them, which makes them of particular interest to the collector.

Based on signatures of journeymen pewterers on the cup

Welcome cups were displayed on buffets at civic dinners. This cup was made for the Pewterers' Journeymen's Guild of Lübeck.

After their apprenticeships, German pewterers had to embark on a further seven to nine years as journeymen, before they could become masters. They travelled abroad to enhance their skills and acquire new designs. Journeymen's guilds not only looked after their interests but regulated their behaviour. This cup is inscribed in German ‘This is the Welcome [cup] of all Honorable pewter founder journeymen Anno June 24, 1717’ and ‘Drinking and being Merry is all well and good, but remember that we are all united’ a plea against accusations of drunkenness and riotous living sometimes levelled at them.

M.136:1 to 3-1930