Lot 767. A South German turned ivory cup and cover, 17th century; height 20 in. 51 cm. Estimate 200,000 — 400,000 USD. Lot sold 170,500 USD. Photo Sotheby's 2011.

the conical base of ridged lobes rising to a gadrooned baluster form stem with stepped florettes, a ring of foliate points below the gadrooned cup, divided horizontally into three registers, the conforming lid surmounted by a ring below a crown-form beneath a spiralling openwork finial with encircling ramp surmounted by a smaller crown. 

Note: This impressive ivory goblet closely relates to a cup and cover turned by Emperor Leopold I in 1618 when he was as Archduke of Austria, now preserved in the Danish Royal Kunstkammer at Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen (Gundestrup 1991, pp. 261-262, DKK 23.81). That example bears the signature Leopoldus Archiduc Austriae fecit 1618 and the Austrian coat of arms, and like the present cup features a high conical base comprised of ridged lobes, a densely gadrooned stem, a cup in three registers, and a pierced crown. The finial of the present cup is similar in design to a late 16th century candlestick turned in Dresden and today preserved in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich (Maurice 1985, p. 79, no. 88).

The lathe made it possible for artists to achieve sculptural forms which would be impossible to create by hand; the operator applied tools to subtract material from a solid medium rotating rapidly on an axis powered by a treadle or a flywheel. Innovations to this basic process in the late 16th century vastly widened the formal possibilities: multiple axes, elliptical motion, elaborate rotating chucks, and complex cutting tools allowed for the production of spiraling, asymmetrical, undercut, and often paper-thin elements.

The form of a spiralling tower with encircling ramp in turned ivory has been compared to a kind of miniature Tower of Babel, as indeed it strains the limit of possibility and evokes a sense of audacious, hubristic height.

Sotheby's. Property from the Collections of Lily & Edmond J. Safra - Volumes I-VI. New York, 18 Oct 2011