The Bayou Bend cup is among the earliest documented works by Jeremiah Dummer. This form is now popularly referred to as a caudle cup, implying it was intended as a receptacle for a concoction of warm wine and brandy or tea, mixed with bread, eggs, sugar, and spices. However, in the seventeenth century it probably held a variety of beverages. While this example was originally made for domestic purposes, it was later presented to the First Church, Dorchester, Massachusetts, for use as a Communion vessel. This transformation of household objects into ecclesiastical ones is wholly consistent with the Protestants' efforts to return to the simplicity of early Christianity and to distance themselves from what they considered the excessive trappings and ritual of the Roman Catholic Church.

Technical notes: The body is raised, and the handles cast.

Related examples: Those belonging to churches are Jones 1913, p. 150, pl. LIV, p. 178, pl. LXI, no. 2, pp. 304–5, pl. XCIV, no. 1, pp.  393–94. pl. CXXI; Ward and Hosley 1985, pp. 281–82, no. 163. Examples in public collections include Sprackling 1958; Winchester et al.  1959, p. 184; Buhler and Hood 1970, vol. 1, pp. 13–14, no. 8; Hanks 1970, p. 418; Buhler 1972, vol. I, pp. 17–18, no. 15; Puig et al. 1989, pp. 206–7, no. 172; Quimby 1995, pp. 90–91, no. 47.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff.  American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.