The nautilus cup was much desired during the Dutch “Golden Age,” as attested by its presence in seventeenth-century collections and its regular appearance in Dutch still life painting. Among other curious objects, Pieter Claesz depicts a nautilus cup in specific detail, intricate enough to identify this as the nautilus cup mounted in 1596 by Utrecht goldsmith Jan Jacobsz. van Royesteyn. (figures 2.1 and 2.2) Another typical example of this curious object is a similar mount made in 1592 in Delft, possibly by Nicolaas de Grebber. (plate 1) This object was depicted in the painted collection inventory, The Paston Treasure (1670s), painted in England by an unknown Dutch artist. The mother-of-pearl surface of the shell, incised with lines forming foliage, birds, and tiny scales, serves as the rounded body for a gilded monster with open mouth and scaly neck, wrapped on four sides with narrow figural straps. This, with an extended lip suggestive of pouring, comprises the bowl of a goblet, which is mounted on a stem of two satyrs, one playing a flute and other singing from a book, and held steady by a flattened turtle atop a decorative base. Various details on the mount refer to the sea: the man riding the monster's neck is a tiny Neptune, and once held a trident, a miniature nautilus floats at the turtle's side, and tiny scallop shells are included throughout.