The Royal Gold Cup is a solid gold covered cup lavishly decorated with enamel and pearls. It was made for the French royal family at the end of the 14th century, and later belonged to several English monarchs, before spending nearly 300 years in Spain. Since 1892 it has been in the British Museum, and is generally agreed to be the outstanding survival of late medieval French plate. The cup has a cover that lifts off, and once stood on a triangular stand, now lost. The stem of the cup has twice been extended by the addition of cylindrical bands, so that it was originally a good deal shorter, giving the overall shape "a typically robust and stocky elegance." The gold surfaces are decorated with scenes in basse-taille enamel with translucent colours that reflect light from the gold beneath; many areas of gold both underneath the enamel and in the background have engraved and pointillé decoration worked in the gold. Scenes from the life of Saint Agnes run round the top of the cover and the sloping underside of the main body. The symbols of the Four Evangelists run round the foot of the cup, and there are enamel medallions at the centre of the inside of both the cup and the cover. The lower of the two added bands contains enamel Tudor roses on a diapered pointillé background; this was apparently added under Henry VIII.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Gold_Cup

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1553:

Four days after the death of her predecessor, Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey was officially proclaimed Queen of England, beginning her reign as "The Nine Days' Queen". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Jane_Grey

1800:

Lord Wellesley, Governor-General of the British Raj, founded Fort William College in Fort William, India, to promote Bengali, Hindi and other vernaculars of the subcontinent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_William_College

1913:

California's Death Valley hit 134 °F (56.7 °C), the highest temperature ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Valley_National_Park

1925:

Indian mystic and spiritual master Meher Baba began his silence until his death in 1969, only communicating by means of an alphabet board or by unique hand gestures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meher_Baba

1941:

The Holocaust: A group of non-Jewish ethnic Poles from around the nearby area murdered hundreds of Jewish residents of Jedwabne in occupied Poland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedwabne_pogrom

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

ocularly (adv): 1. By means of the eye; visually. 2. Into or towards the eye http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ocularly

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer. --William Blackstone http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Blackstone