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| The Victoria & Albert Museum |
Aside from egg nog, the drink most closely associated with Christmas is wassail, or spiced ale. The ornate bowl we see above is from a set made for serving wassail. This unusual set is the only one ever found that has a table and candle-stands to match. The bowl and cups are in a style made predominately date from the 1640s.
The entire set was owned by one family for generations before the Victoria & Albert Museum purchased it in 1976. The lore of the family states that King Charles I gave it to Sir Charles Cokayne, 1st Viscount Cullen, after the Civil War battle at Naseby in 1645.
Well, let's look at that. The battle did take place near Cokayne's house, Rushton Hall, Northamptonshire. However the style and craftsmanship of the furniture suggests that this story could only apply to the bowl and cups. Obviously, the table and stands must have been added later, in the 1670s, when spirally turned supports were fashionable.
Another unusual feature of the set as a whole is that it is made of lignum vitae, a dense wood imported from the West Indies. The wood's high oil content makes it resistant to liquids, and it takes incised decoration well. The curators of the V&A note, "Both the wood and the ivory, which provides a strong contrast, are decorated with 'rose engine turning', in which delicate circular patterns are incised into the material while it is spun on a lathe."
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