At first glance, the Museum’s stunning Nautilus Cup looks like
an impractical way to drink. Tankards and beakers, which are
also on display in the Museum’s Gallery #2, make sensible
drinking vessels. In comparison the nautilus cup, a chambered
nautilus shell mounted with elaborate metal work, perhaps could
function as a drinking vessel, but seems more convincing as an
aesthetic object. Because it is gorgeous. Would anyone use this
stunning object to serve beverages? If not, why would anyone
have this kind of odd-shaped cup? What did it mean? In directly
combing man’s art with God’s nature, a nautilus cup was the type
of treasure that would have been housed in a Renaissance
Wunderkammer. Wunderkammer were privately-owned collections that
are considered the predecessor of the modern museum. German for
“room of wonder” or “cabinet of curiosities,” Wunderkammer
developed in mid-16th-century Europe and celebrated man-made
arts and also natural arts, with minerals, ivory, ostrich eggs,
coconut shells, nautilus shel