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>
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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>
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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>
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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>
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