# The Palmer Cup > Unknown Jaziran glass workshop, with an unknown Parisian goldsmith's mount - Glass beaker: c. AD 1200-1225 (AH 597-622). Mount: c. 1250s-1260s. > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unknown-jaziran-glass-workshop-palmer-cup/palmer-cup-british-museum/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-12 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown Jaziran glass workshop, with an unknown Parisian goldsmith's mount - **Date:** Glass beaker: c. AD 1200-1225 (AH 597-622). Mount: c. 1250s-1260s. - **Medium:** Glass beaker: free-blown clear glass, enamelled and gilt. Mount: silver, gilt, repousse and filigree work, with a ribbed rock-crystal knop in the stem. - **Dimensions:** Height 26.3 cm (10.6 in) with mount; diameter 13.2 cm; mass 392.5 g (Wikidata, sourced to British Museum collection records). Read's 1902 catalogue gives the height as 10 3/4 inches. - **Object type:** Glass - **Period:** Islamic, Jazira region, early 13th century (glass); French Gothic, mid-13th century (mount) - **Current location:** British Museum, London, Waddesdon Bequest gallery, Room 2A, Case 6b - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary The Palmer Cup joins two objects made a generation and a continent apart: a clear glass beaker, enamelled and gilt in the Jazira region of northern Iraq or Syria around 1200-1225, and a silver-gilt stemmed foot added in Paris a generation or more later to turn it into a European goblet. Below a band of Arabic poetry celebrating wine and youth, drawn from the Abbasid poet Kushajim, sits a scene of a seated prince flanked by armed attendants and a polo player - courtly imagery shared with Mosul-region metalwork and manuscript painting of the same date.For roughly four centuries after that, nothing is recorded. It resurfaces in the Palmer family of Ladbroke, Warwickshire, attached to a crusades-era legend about winning it from a king of France at cards - a story the family's own 1902 and 1914 accounts both independently call apocryphal. By 1893 it had been reduced to holding cut flowers on a piano at the family's Derbyshire house, until it was brought to the British Museum, identified by curator A.W. Franks, and sold at Christie's for 1,650 guineas to a dealer bidding for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild. Rothschild's death in 1898 carried it, with nearly 300 other objects, into the British Museum's Waddesdon Bequest, under terms of permanent, undivided display that still hold today. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1200-c. 1225** Manufacture: unknown Jaziran glass workshop `[documented]` (origin) Glass beaker enamelled and gilt, attributed by Anna Contadini to the Jazira area of northern Iraq/Syria, probably Raqqa or Aleppo, on stylistic and inscriptional grounds. - **c. 1225-c. 1250s** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No source documents how or when the glass beaker left the Jazira region and reached Western Europe. - **c. 1250s-c. 1260s** Unknown French (probably Parisian) goldsmith `[documented]` (modification) Silver-gilt mount added, probably in Paris, converting the beaker into a stemmed goblet. Dated by Contadini (2017) on stylistic grounds; superseding Read (1902) and Dalton (1927), who dated the mount to the early 14th century, contemporary with their (also since-revised) dating of the glass. - **c. 1260s-1633** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) Roughly 350-400 years with no documented owner. The British Museum's own catalogue states plainly that the cup's history prior to the 1893 sale is unknown. - **undated** Alleged: an unnamed ancestor of the Palmer family, won from a king of France `[disputed]` (family legend) A story, recorded by Read in 1902 as 'presumably apocryphal', that an ancestor of the Palmer family won the cup from the then king of France at a game of cards while on crusade. Independently discounted at length by the family's own historian, S.H.A. Hervey, in his 1914 history of Ladbroke, who finds no supporting evidence for the cup's presence in the family before the historical record becomes traceable. - **1633-1863** Palmer family (later Palmer-Morewood), of Ladbroke Hall, Warwickshire `[documented]` (possession) The Palmer family bought the manor of Ladbroke in 1633; the cup, known locally as 'the Ladbroke cup', was among the family's possessions there, though the date it entered their collection is not documented within this span. - **1863-1893** Palmer-Morewood family, of Alfreton Hall, Derbyshire `[documented]` (relocation) The cup moved from Ladbroke to Alfreton Hall around 1863, when the family's principal residence shifted there, and remained at Alfreton until 1893. - **1893** Mrs Palmer-Morewood (individual identity not established) `[documented]` (identification) Brought to the British Museum in 1893 for identification, having reportedly been used as a flower vase on a piano; identified there by A.W. Franks, Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities and Ethnography. - **1893-07-17** Sold via Christie's, London, to 'A.W.' (probably Asher Wertheimer) `[documented]` (auction sale) Sold as lot 132 in Christie's 17 July 1893 sale, 'Porcelain, Miniatures and Decorative Objects', hammer price 1,650 guineas (GBP 1,732 10s). Buyer recorded only by initials 'A.W.', identified by the British Museum as probably the dealer Asher Wertheimer, understood to have bid on behalf of Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild. - **1893-1898** Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, Waddesdon Manor `[documented]` (private collection) Entered Rothschild's collection at Waddesdon Manor following the 1893 sale. - **1898-present** British Museum, London (Waddesdon Bequest) `[documented]` (bequest) Rothschild died in December 1898, bequeathing nearly 300 objects to the British Museum under terms requiring permanent display, intact, in a dedicated room. The Bequest opened to the public 9 April 1900 in Room 40 and has occupied Room 2A since June 2015. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **1893-07-17** Christie's, - Estimate: Not found in the sources consulted for this record. - Hammer: 1,650 guineas - With premium: Not documented; no buyer's premium existed at British auction houses in 1893 (the modern buyer's premium was not introduced until 1975), so no separate premium figure applies. - Hammer price is recorded in two equivalent customary units: 1,650 guineas, and 1,732 pounds 10 shillings (a guinea equalled one pound and one shilling). Sale catalogued as 'Porcelain, Miniatures and Decorative Objects', lot 132. Buyer recorded only by initials 'A.W.', identified by the British Museum as probably the dealer Asher Wertheimer, understood to have bid for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild rather than for his own account. ## Open questions - How and when did the glass beaker leave the Jazira workshop tradition and enter Latin European hands, and how and when was the French mount added to it - no source consulted for this record documents the route. - How and when did the mounted cup enter the possession of the Palmer family of Ladbroke, Warwickshire - the family held the manor from 1633, but the British Museum's own catalogue states the cup's history before 1893 is unknown. - Is there any genuine substance behind the family legend that an ancestor won the cup from a king of France at cards while on crusade, or is it, as both Read (1902) and the family's own historian Hervey (1914) independently concluded, apocryphal invention with no supporting evidence either way. - What is the exact wording and placement of the second inscribed verse, attributed by Anna Contadini to the poet Ibn al-Muhtasib, alongside the better-documented Kushajim line - not recovered from the sources consulted for this record. - Which specific Mrs Palmer-Morewood brought the cup to the British Museum in 1893 for identification, and whether the July 1893 sale followed from the settlement of the family matriarch's estate after her death that January, or was unconnected to it. - Whether the French mount's chalice-like form indicates the cup was ever used as an actual liturgical vessel, or purely as a secular standing cup - the sources describe the mount's form but not its documented use. ## Sources - [1] British Museum, 'The Palmer Cup', Waddesdon Bequest online catalogue (curatorial description, provenance note, commentary and full bibliography). - [2] Wikidata, 'Palmer Cup', Q124420475 (dimensions, mass, collection and inventory data). - [3] Wikipedia, 'Palmer Cup', consolidating British Museum and Contadini material. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with the underlying Contadini and Read/Dalton texts directly. - [4] Anna Contadini, 'Text and Image on Middle Eastern Objects: The Palmer Cup in Context', in A Rothschild Renaissance: A New Look at the Waddesdon Bequest in the British Museum, British Museum Research Publication 212, London, 2017, pp. 124-145 (quotations per publicly available abstract/summary and citing sources). - [5] Anna Contadini, 'Poetry on Enamelled Glass: The Palmer Cup in the British Museum', in Rachel Ward (ed.), Gilded and Enamelled Glass from the Middle East, British Museum Press, London, 1998, pp. 56-60. - [6] Hugh Tait, 'The Palmer Cup and related glasses exported to Europe in the Middle Ages', in Rachel Ward (ed.), Gilded and Enamelled Glass from the Middle East, British Museum Press, London, 1998, pp. 50-55. Cited by title and existence via the British Museum's own bibliography; full text not independently consulted for this record. - [7] Charles Hercules Read, The Waddesdon Bequest: Catalogue of the Works of Art Bequeathed to the British Museum by Baron Ferdinand Rothschild, M.P., 1898, British Museum, London, 1902, no. 53, pl. XIV. - [8] O.M. Dalton, The Waddesdon Bequest, 2nd edn (revised), British Museum, London, 1927, no. 53, pl. VII. Cited via the British Museum's own bibliography; full text not independently consulted for this record. - [9] Sydenham Henry Augustus Hervey, Ladbroke and its Owners, Paul & Mathew, Bury St Edmunds, 1914, Chapter XI 'The Palmer and the Cup', pp. 125-129, and family genealogy chapters on the Palmer and Palmer-Morewood succession. - [10] Christie's, London, Catalogue of Porcelain, Miniatures and Decorative Objects, 17 July 1893, lot 132. Cited via the British Museum's own bibliography; the original sale catalogue was not independently consulted for this record. - [11] H.C. Marillier, Christie's 1766 to 1925, Constable & Company, London, 1926, p. x. Cited via the British Museum's own bibliography; full text not independently consulted for this record. - [12] Wikipedia, 'Waddesdon Bequest', for the terms of Ferdinand de Rothschild's will, the number of objects, and the gallery history (Room 40 from 1900; Room 2A from 2015). Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with the British Museum's own gallery text and Rothschild's probate record directly. - [13] Wikipedia, 'Augustus Wollaston Franks', for Franks's dates and role as Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities and Ethnography, 1866-1896. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with the Dictionary of National Biography entry or David M. Wilson's The Forgotten Collector. - [14] Wikipedia, 'Ferdinand de Rothschild', for biography and Waddesdon Manor building history. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with the Rothschild Archive's own family history pages or the Journal of the History of Collections article on Rothschild's sense of family origins. - [15] British Museum, 'The Waddesdon Bequest' gallery page, for current Room 2A location and general Bequest description. - [16] The Corning Museum of Glass, 'The Aldrevandin Group', Techniques of Renaissance Venetian Glassworking, for the Aldrevandini Beaker's signature, dating and attribution history (formerly 'Syro-Frankish', confirmed Venetian by excavated fragments by 1988). - [17] UK Inflation Calculator (in2013dollars.com / officialdata.org), composite price index derived from Office for National Statistics data, for the 1893-to-2026 price conversion. - [18] Anna Contadini, Arab Painting: Text and Image in Illustrated Arabic Manuscripts, Brill, Leiden, 2010, p. 11 (describing the Palmer Cup as 'the Ayyubid enamelled beaker known as the Palmer Cup'). - [19] Wikipedia, 'Wertheimer portraits', for Asher Wertheimer's biography as a London art dealer. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with a dedicated art-trade history of Wertheimer's firm. - [20] Musee des Beaux-Arts, Chartres / Forteresse de Chinon exhibition text, on the 'Cup of Charlemagne' (Verre de Charlemagne), its Syrian glass, its French gilt-copper base, and its disproved eighteenth-century Charlemagne legend. - [21] Compiled secondary accounts of English clergy stipends (stgitehistory.org.uk, 'Fortunes of the Clergy'; English Historical Fiction Authors blog, 'Vicars and curates and livings'), for the approximate late-19th-century curate's annual salary used as a period-wage comparison. Tertiary/compiled sources; flagged for replacement with a primary Church of England stipend record. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.