c.1300 Silver and Parcel gilt cup
This type of drinking cup (or 'belt-bowl') It was carried in a bag that hung from the traveller's belt, Ithad its origins in eastern Asia, spread west during the Mongol expansion of the early thirteenth century.
Note the gilded central medallion with a winged sphinx with dragon-headed tail against a foliate ground.
Private collection. Auctioned by Sotheby's, London, in 2007