Tankard with bacchic figures and Silenus, German (probably Augsburg), ca. 1630-1650. Ivory and silver-gilt. Height: 28.8cm Diameter: 5.875in Ivory drum alone height: 15.8cm Width: 12cm. Bequeathed by John Jones, 880-1882 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London 

Tankard. The drum ivory, carved in relief. A frieze of dancing male and female bacchic figures with bunches and baskets of grapes, some supporting the drunken Silenus, runs round the drum. A wild boar is shown with them, near him a man vomits on the ground. A seated putto, cross-legged and blowing into a shell, forms the knop on the lid. The interior of the tankard is fitted with a silver-gilt liner. The mounts may be later; they do not seem to fit the ivory drum well, and exhibit a less fluid style than might be expected for this period. The maker’s initials WS on the underside of the base resemble those of the seventeenth-century goldsmith Wilhelm Schröder of Lüneburg, but they could have been made in the nineteenth century in Hanau. The ivory drum is likely to be South German, probably Augsburg, although strongly influenced by Rubens's work.