Stürzbecher, or “somersault cup”, is a German term for a vessel with a stem but no foot; when empty it must stand inverted. It is a type of wager cup, popular in Germany and Holland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which required the drink to be consumed entirely before the cup could be put down. Often broken drinking glasses were re-made into stürzbecher but glasses were also made specifically to be mounted in silver. The glass and mounts of this cup appear to be contemporary and so it is difficult to establish whether this cup had a previous incarnation.

Vetro a retorti was a glassmaking technique developed in Venice in the sixteenth century and practised in the Netherlands contemporaneously. It involves laying parallel canes of glass, which have threads embedded within them in vertical or spiral patterns. These canes are then flattened and fused together with heat to achieve the resulting glass.

Sir Arthur Gilbert and his wife Rosalinde formed one of the world's great decorative art collections, including silver, mosaics, enamelled portrait miniatures and gold boxes. Arthur Gilbert donated his extraordinary collection to Britain in 1996.