Object Description
An 18th century Kit-kat club silver and copper drinking chalice. The chalice has a silver turned base with a silver rim and a copper body which would have once been gilded inside, on the face of the copper body is a silver emblem or coat of arms for the Kitkat club. Overall the chalice is in good condition with some minor knocks and some slight bending to the rim commensurate with age. The copper body has developed a lovely dark rich patina which really highlights the silver.
The Kit-Cat Club (sometimes Kit Kat Club) was an early 18th-century English club in London with strong political and literary associations. Members of the club were committed Whigs. They met at the Trumpet tavern in London and at Water Oakley in the Berkshire countryside.
The first meetings were held at a tavern in Shire Lane (parallel with Bell Yard and now covered by the Royal Courts of Justice) run by an innkeeper called Christopher Catt. He gave his name to the mutton pies known as “Kit Cats” from which the name of the club is derived.
The club later moved to the Fountain Tavern on The Strand (now the site of Simpson’s-in-the-Strand), and latterly into a room especially built for the purpose at Barn Elms, the home of the secretary Jacob Tonson. In summer, the club met at the Upper Flask, Hampstead Heath.
Whence deathless Kit-Kat took his name
Few critics can unriddle
Some say from pastrycook it came
And some from Cat and Fiddle.
From no trim beaus its name it boasts
Grey statesmen or green wits
But from the pell-mell pack of toasts
Of old Cats and young Kits.