In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, ornate mounts, often of gilded silver, transformed coconuts into lidded cups. The fashion was particularly popular in Northern Europe, and coconut cups were displayed and admired on sideboards (with other items of silver) or included in collections of rare natural objects together with shells, fossils and coral. This example was bequeathed to the Museum in 1923 and until recently was believed to date from the sixteenth century, albeit with a restored foot and without the original finial. However, a recent examination suggests this cup was assembled in the nineteenth, or even the early twentieth, century, and that the maker copied some of the mounts from a coconut cup of around 1600 that was made in Zurich.