Double Cup (Mazer) (c. 1530): Art, History and Details

Double Cup (Mazer) (c. 1530) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A characteristic form of drinking vessel made of close-grained wood, especially maple, was developed in Germany as early as the thirteenth century. It consisted of a larger cup with a foot and a handle and a smaller cup on top. The upper one served as a lid but could also be removed and used as a separate drinking vessel. In this example the smaller upper cup is inset with a memorial portrait medallion of Albrecht Dürer made in the year of his death, 1528. The medal is the work of Matthes Gebel who was active in Nuremberg and Augsburg as a medallist from 1523 to his death in 1574. The reverse of the medal is set into the base of the larger lower cup.

Object facts

• Title: Double Cup (Mazer)
• Date: c. 1530
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Wood
• Technique: maple wood with gilt-silver mounts
• Dimensions: Part 2: 17.4 cm (6 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1950.83

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Foote, H. (December 1950). "A Sixteenth-Century 'Double Mazer'". The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 37(10), 204-205. Published as Double Mazer.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.