This elegantly proportioned cup, made in seventeenth-century China from a single piece of rhinoceros horn—probably a posterior horn of a Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis )—was dyed and polished to reveal a lustrous, warm golden-reddish cinnamon hue, darkening slightly at the core. Raised on a oval-shaped, low and slightly flared foot with a recessed base, the cup has a tapering body with a wide pouring lip decorated with Chinese key-fret friezes beneath the rim and on top of the lip. The waisted body is finely carved in shallow relief with a band of archaistic, stylised tāotiè masks—an ancient Chinese mythological creature associated with gluttony—over a ground of repeating Chinese keys, a pattern known as léiwén (literally, ‘thunder pattern’). Lively chīlóng carved in high-relief—a mythical ‘hornless dragon’ or ‘young dragon’—climb around the sides, while a larger one, forming the curved handle (chīniǔ), creeps over into the smooth, polished interior. On one side, crossing the léiwén ground and almost reaching the everted rim, is a stylised flying phoenix (fènghuáng).

This carved rhinoceros horn cup is modelled after a bronze vessel type called a gōng in Chinese, an archaic sacrificial vessel. Designed for mixing wine with water, the gōng was used for storing and pouring rice wine at ritual banquets, part of ancestor worship, and was often deposited as grave goods in high-status burials. The gōng usually features a broad rim, a projecting spout aligned with a vertical handle at the back, and rises from a single thick oval-shaped foot, or more rarely from multiple feet. It was believed that wine vapours were consumed by the spirits of the dead, while the physical contents were enjoyed by the living. Archaic bronze vessels of this type, made between the Shang and Zhou dynasties (c. 1700-c. 900 BCE), are often shaped as one or more animals, with a fully zoomorphic cover—absent from the later iterations in porcelain and rhinoceros horn—and an animal-shaped vertical handle opposite the spout. After the middle Western Zhou period, the gōng came to be used as a water vessel, its name changing to yí.[1] Lacking a cover and raised on four feet, the yí takes the form of a half gourd fitted with a handle. Used alongside flat basins (pén), it contained and poured water for washing the hands before rituals.

In China, rhinoceros horn cups were prized collector’s items, often gifted to successful scholars. Their carving, particularly in workshops in southern cities such as Guangzhou, flourished from the late Ming to the early Qing dynasties, from the late sixteenth century to the eighteenth century.[2] Worked in China from the Tang dynasty (618-907) onwards—possibly as sacrificial vessels—and treasured in Asia since Antiquity for their antidotal qualities and supposed magical powers, rhinoceros horn cups were highly sought after in late Renaissance Europe. Archival research shows that such cup, along with whole horns imported in bulk, were avidly collected at the Lisbon court in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[3] Two carved rhinoceros horn cups modelled after archaic bronze vessels were bequeathed in 1753 to the British Museum, London, by Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), the Irish physician and collector whose library and collections formed the chief foundation collection of the museum. Similarly shaped, with everted rims—albeit lacking the projecting spout seen on Bronze Age examples and on the present cup—Sloane’s libation cups (invs. SLMisc.143 and SLMisc.158) date no later than the last decades of the seventeenth century. The design and motifs on the first of Sloane’s cups closely resemble those of the present example, featuring a vertical handle in the form of a chīlóng, meander friezes or Chinese key frets beneath rim and on top of the lip and at the base of the foot, and a central band of stylised tāotiè masks over a ground of interlocking lozenges (léiwén).

[1] Ma Chengyuan, “The Splendor of Ancient Chinese Bronzes”, in Wen Fong (ed.), The Great Bronze Age of China. An Exhibition from the People’s Republic of China (cat.), New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Alfred A. Knopf, 1980, pp. 1-19, on p. 14.

[2] On this production, see Jan Chapman, The Art of Rhinoceros Horn Carving in China, London, Christie’s Books, 1999.

[3] Hugo Miguel Crespo (ed.), At The Prince’s Table. Dining at the Lisbon Court (1500-1700). Silver, Mother-of-pearl, Rock Crystal and Porcelain, Lisbon, AR-PAB, 2018, pp. 232-237, cat. 30.