After visiting the National Museum of Denmark, I became interested in silver cups from the Viking age.
One of the most famous viking age silver cups is a round bottomed cup from the Lejre hoard with cast details and gilding near the rim. I’ve seen several reproductions of this cup, and the original is shown in the photo below.
Another famous silver cup, known as the Jelling Cup or Gorm’s Cup, has an entirely different shape/design than the other round cups found.
Simpler, as well as more ornate, cups made from silver have been found as well. The Fejø cup, found in 1872, features intricate engraved ornamentation, and had several smaller silver cups associated with it. The Fejø cup itself was found to be Frankish in origin from the 8th c., but the smaller cups are of Scandinavian origin from the 10th c.. It is believed that the cups may have been used as a set for liturgical or ritual purposes. Several of the smaller cups, more of which have been found as recently as 2016, have engraving near the lip in a triangular pattern. One of the most surprising things in seeing all of the cups is how small they were.
The Ribe cup is another engraved Frankish cup in the Copenhagen museum.
The specific cup I’ve made was inspired by was found in 2016 in the Lejre region of Denmark
My first attempt used a 4.5” round of 18 gauge Argentium silver. Unfortunately, cracking developed in the base of the cup late in the process. This cracking was not due to over-work, but rather to over-annealing of this area without continuing to work the base as I shaped the lip. The grain structure of the silver grew from the repeated annealing and ultimately, several small cracks appeared when the shape had been mostly completed.
Back to the drawing board. I realized that the size of the 1st try was a little large, so the final cup was raised from a 4” round cut from 18 gauge sterling silver. I concentrated on continuing to move the metal around the base of the cup throughout the process and not focusing the flame into the center of the bowl. The finished cup measures a little over 3” in diameter. The detail on lip was done with a hand graver.
