Coconut, with silver and enamelled mounts; Switzerland, 1571, unidentified maker's mark IA

Coconut shell mounted in silver, parcel gilt. On the cover is a medallion of enamelled arms, and on the stem three other enamelled shields. Surmounted by a figure, possibly St Maur or John the Baptist.

The maker's mark I A, separated by a pellet and in a rectangular punch, is not listed in Rosenberg (1928), vol. IV, or in de Vevey (1985) as a Swiss goldsmith. de Wolff (1963), who was unable to handle the cup, speculated the mark may in fact be 'PA' and therefore the work of Sion goldsmith Peter Anthamatten (de Wolff: 1963, p.277 and his suggestion followed by Fritz: 1983, p. 108). De Wolff also wondered whether the initials in the mark belonged to a German goldsmith, though he offered no possible makers and the mark is not recorded in Rosenberg (1911).
The arms on the cup indicate it was commissioned for commemorative purposes and it was probably a gift to Antoine Kalbermatter of Sion, whose arms and those of his relations appear on the lid and foot. Kalbermatter was the son of Jean Kalbermatter, châtelain (steward) of Hérens and of Antonia de Riedmatten, daughter of Bishop Adrian I of Riedmatten. He studied at Paris (1532-35), and enjoyed a successful career in the world of Valais diplomacy and administration. He represented the canton of Valais at the 1563 Diet (council) at Baden and in 1566-57 he was elected to the highest administrative post in the region, that of royal magistrate or grand bailli, a post he was returned to in 1569 and again in 1571. He married first in 1551 (the marriage produced two daughters) and again in 1571. He died at the end of the following year, in 1572 (de Wolff: 1963, pp. 276-7). Antoine Kalbermatter's contemporaries described him as 'a man who from his youth had served his country well'. Kalbermatter himself seems to have been something of a bon viveur as well as a patriot. He once apparently observed that 'long live Prafalcon [a wine-growing district in the canton] where good wine is cultivated. Without good wine, nothing is done in the world' ('vivat Prafalcon ubi crescit bonum vinum. Sine bono vino, factum est nihil in mundo': cited in de Wolff (1963), p. 277).
This cup may have been presented to him to celebrate his second marriage to Anna In Albon in 1571, or perhaps to mark the second occasion of his election to the highest administrative position in the canton, that of royal magistrate (bailli), in the same year.
The Museum purchased the cup for £40 at the 1855 sale of the collection belonging to Ralph Bernal.

Historical significance: This is a good example of a type of mounted vessel which became increasingly common in wealthy households towards the end of the sixteenth century.

Provenance

Ralph Bernal (1783-1854) was a renowned collector and objects from his collection are now in museums across the world, including the V&A. He was born into a Sephardic Jewish family of Spanish descent, but was baptised into the Christian religion at the age of 22. Bernal studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, and subsequently became a prominent Whig politician. He built a reputation for himself as a man of taste and culture through the collection he amassed and later in life he became the president of the British Archaeological Society. Yet the main source of income which enabled him to do this was the profits from enslaved labour.

In 1811, Bernal inherited three sugar plantations in Jamaica, where over 500 people were eventually enslaved. Almost immediately, he began collecting works of art and antiquities. After the emancipation of those enslaved in the British Caribbean in the 1830s, made possible in part by acts of their own resistance, Bernal was awarded compensation of more than £11,450 (equivalent to over £1.5 million today). This was for the loss of 564 people enslaved on Bernal's estates who were classed by the British government as his 'property'. They included people like Antora, and her son Edward, who in August 1834 was around five years old (The National Archives, T 71/49). Receiving the money appears to have led to an escalation of Bernal's collecting.

When Bernal died in 1855, he was celebrated for 'the perfection of his taste, as well as the extent of his knowledge' (Christie and Manson, 1855). His collection was dispersed in a major auction during which the Museum of Ornamental Art at Marlborough House, which later became the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A), was the biggest single buyer.

Although still costly in the late sixteenth century, when this cup was mounted, coconuts had been imported into Europe since the eighth century. The frequent documentary references to them in wills and inventories suggests they arrived in considerable numbers. Marco Polo referred to the trade in around 1300, appropriately describing the coconuts as 'Indian nuts' because at this early date, they came from the Sunda Islands in the Malay archipelago and the Malabar coast (the south-western coast of the Indian subcontinent). From there they were shipped to Aden and thence by land to Egypt, eventually arriving in Alexandria or Tripoli where they were bought by Venetian or Genoese merchants. As the fifteenth century progressed, Lisbon became another centre for the trade, as they were imported by Portuguese merchants and sailors travelling down the African coast and round to India. During the sixteenth century, coconuts from the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Americas also began to arrive in Europe. Mounted coconuts were particularly fashionable in England, as evinced by the high proportion of surviving examples as well as by references to them in inventories and wills, but significant numbers are also preserved in Switzerland, Austria and South Germany.
All sorts of health-giving properties are ascribed to the milk and flesh of coconuts. Marco Polo praised coconut milk as a panacea and the Arab historian Ibn Batuta noted its medicinal and aphrodisiac properties in the fourteenth century. In a work published in 1557, the physician and herbalist Adam Lonicerus recommended the coconut as a remedy for bladder complaints, pains in the hip joints and lethargy. By 1611, coconuts were also said to cure gout. Coconut shells, like serpentine cups and unicorn horns, were believed to be effective against poison.
Coconuts were frequently mounted as cups, particularly in the second half of the sixteenth century when they began to appear amongst the possessions of wealthy townsmen and merchants as well as those of princes and nobles. These cup mounts could be quite elaborate, transforming the nut into a bird or animal. Coconuts also appeared in church treasuries, as chalices and as caskets for reliquaries. Coconut cups were used in institutional ceremonies: in England, a number of coconut guild cups have survived. The inside of coconut cups was often coated with a turpentine-based resin coloured yellow, black or red, to protect the nut from the acid effect of wine. An expensive alternative was to line the inside of the cup with gilded silver (Fritz: 1983, p. 45). There is no silver lining, or trace of resin, inside this cup. Although this does not preclude the fact the cup was used, the hole in the base of the bowl suggest some form of lining would have been necessary were it to have contained liquid. (There is also a hole in the nut at the dome of the lid.) The hinge and catch are later and suggest it was used at a later date as a casket. It may have become a sugar bowl, the fate of one coconut cup owned by the eighteenth-century English wood-engraver Thomas Bewick: 'In ordinary use at the tea-table was a carved cocoa-nut cup or sugar basin, mounted in silver and inscribed on the rim, "Thomas Bewick, Newcastle, 1779." It was the first article bought before he began housekeeping' (Robinson: 1887, p. 212).

Coconuts had been prized by wealthy European collectors since the eighth century. Originally imported from the south-western coast of the Indian subcontinent by Arab and Jewish traders, by the sixteenth century Spanish and Portuguese merchants were shipping coconuts to Europe from Central and South America as well. This cup was made for Antoine Kalbermatter, royal magistrate of the Swiss canton of Valais and an important member of his province's ruling élite. Drinking vessels were often presented as commemorative gifts and the plaque on the lid, which combines Antoine's arms with those of his second wife, may celebrate his marriage in 1571.

2118:1, 2-1855