Musical Drinking-Cups

Extract

B. Shefton and M. Vickers recently called attention to a kind of drinking-cup having clay pellets inside the hollow rim of the foot, or inside the hollow lip, which rattle when the cup is moved. The examples noted belong in part to the beginning of the fifth century, in part to the mid-fourth.

A cup of the earlier series (Oslo University ES 36266, ex Hope) appeared in CV Norway (1) pl. 50, 2. X-ray photographs provided by the laboratory of the Historical Museum, Oslo, can now supplement the description; comparison with the published X-rays of other rattle-cups shows interesting variety in the preparation of such vases. There are nine small pellets in the channel inside the foot. They appear to be of uniform size and regular shape, so it is perhaps not likely that any got in by accident later, although there is an unplugged hole (compare the foot of the cup by Skythes in Toronto, Vickers, pl. 5, 2). In our CV publication the open hole was interpreted as a convenient solution to the combined problems of trapping the pellets and letting the air out, on the theory that the pellets had been previously fired and would not shrink in the kiln as the cup and the hole would. The X-ray reveals an unexpected second hole placed some 120° away from the other and carefully stoppered. No obvious parallel comes to mind except for the cat-hole and kitten-hole in the old story, which is not illuminating; one might cautiously conclude that in the case of one potter at least, the process of preparing a rattle-cup was still a matter for experiment.