Unknown Maker, Dutch

This commemorative goblet features a ship and the inscription “Het lands weldvaaren” (To the prosperity of the country). Considered luxury objects, engraved glasses were often given by the Dutch as gifts. Shareholders, ship captains, and shipmasters commissioned glasses to toast their successes. Merchants pooled their resources in 1602 to form the Dutch East India Company, and again in 1621 to create the Dutch West India Company, trading goods and enslaved people in the Indies, Americas, and Africa. By the 1700s these ventures had generated immense wealth, celebrated here in glass.