Silver

Circular bowl, twisted gadrooned body, chased leaf decoration in centre, on circular base supported by 3 lion feet

In the early twentieth century, the bowl was in the possession of a Mr John Mulhall, who lent it to the Museum from 1910 until his death in 1929. The bowl was shown to members of the London Society of Antiquaries in June 1910 by the President, Charles H. Read, who reported that Mulhall had explained it was from 'the house of an old family in the South of Ireland about half a century ago'. Read stressed that very little was known about the object, suggested that the large, embossed plaque in the well of the bowl 'rather recalls the silver-work of European Turkey', and speculated that it was not originally part of the piece. Mulhall's widow sold the bowl to the Museum in late 1930 or 1931, for the sum of £105. In the introduction to his 1962 picture book on Italian secular silver in the Museum, Charles Oman asserted that the bowl was 'of a quality suggesting that it comes from Venice itself'.

The ornament of this dish is in the style of late Roman silver. In the Middle Ages, knowledge of the classical world increased and the Roman world became a model for the arts.

M.2694-1931