The Loving Cup

The Loving Cup is a decorative vessel that historically commemorates a marriage union, representing the promise of love, honor and good fortune. Inscribed with the nuptial date and the names of the betrothed, it exists as a sober testament to enduring fondness and fidelity. The Loving Cup bears witness to the fragile complexity (and often, ephemerality) of human connection, and serves as a sacrament to the sincerity of care we feel for others, and the esteem we hold for ourselves. 
The Loving Cup exhibition explores how these traditional vessels become a means of archival stewardship, honoring relationships of all kinds. Contemporary artists and designers responded to this historical tradition both in concept and practice, through a diverse range of materials such as ceramic, fiber, metal, and found objects both natural and human-made. Their ideas were born from references real and imagined, like the “Kantharos” used at Bachhanalian banquets, an antique tuffet delicately adorned with a collection of personal trinkets and charms, and even the churlish “push and pull” of a vessel’s organic material. The Loving Cup demonstrates the abiding human impulse to celebrate and immortalize relationships in both public and private; it is the stoic vessel that quietly articulates what it means to promise and to keep.