3-003-739 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Curious drinking-cup formerly in the Strawberry-Hill collection, 1861. 'This very elegant vessel...is thought by Shaw ("Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages") to be a "puzzle cup"; but the present owner considers it to be a sort of domestic "loving cup," and has described it thus: "Standing on its brim, it presents the characteristic face and figure of Queen Elizabeth as a milkmaid, holding a pail above her head. Upside down, it is a cup, the cavity to contain the precious liquor being her Majesty's richly-embroidered hoop-petticoat. It was not intended to be set down until drained of its contents, and though of more modest dimensions than the capacious loving cups, clerical and lay, of colleges and halls, it would afford a copious sip of the highly-spiced wines then in vogue." To this we may add that the small cup at the top is so suspended that any liquid it contains is safe from spilling whether the larger one is turned up or down. It is to this contrivance that the vessel owes probably the name of "Puzzle Cup".' From "Illustrated London News", 1861.