Communion cup 1683 - 1684

Editor: This is a Communion cup, made of silver by Ralph Leeke around 1683-1684. It’s currently housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It feels very austere to me; the simple shape and reflective surface seem to highlight its functionality, but what strikes you first when you look at it? Curator: The immediate appeal resides in the play of light across its surface, doesn’t it? The cool gleam of the silver is subtly modulated by the form. Note the elegant simplicity of the cup's silhouette. The conical bowl transitions smoothly into the stem, which, in turn, flows gracefully into the circular base. How do you read the proportional relationships between those segments? Editor: I guess I hadn't really considered that. The base is solid, and seems to counter the delicacy of the bowl on top. Curator: Precisely. This tension contributes significantly to the overall aesthetic impact. Observe how the artist has employed a restricted vocabulary of forms – circles, cones, and cylinders – to create an object of restrained elegance. Do you find the inscription disrupts or reinforces this design principle? Editor: I'm not sure… It seems… separate, like an add-on? Curator: Exactly, the application of the engraving breaks the overall symmetry and asks us to decode meaning from that disjunction. A key element of formalist theory lies in determining meaning based purely on an artwork’s visual properties, therefore we can examine the tension brought up in its deviation. Editor: That's interesting. So even a simple cup can hold a complex dialogue of form and meaning! I hadn’t thought about it in those terms before. Curator: Indeed. Every element, from the curve of the bowl to the placement of the inscription, contributes to the cup's formal statement. We can discern significant meaning without considering outside factors.