Topic: information on cupping cups.

[Paul S.]

Believe I'm right in saying these come as stand alone cups  -  i.e. without the flame cup that I've seen them associated with previously.    This is a completely new area for me, so very much in the dark, and would like some guidance on date please, also do people think these are genuinely old.     Heights range from 3.75" down to about 3", and all have folded rims.        These seem to be made very crudely, and a couple of them are very asymmetrical, with some stones in the folded rim on one piece, and plenty of horizontal striations and small bubbles in all of them  -  plus the glass is a little lead coloured (I think).     The finials are both round and ground flat (separately)  -  is this usual??     Difficult to find wear on rims like these, but have looked through a lens and think I can see scratches etc., but think they all stand fairly evenly.    Grateful for any information, particularly a date guide, and suggestions as to whether they might be British or Continental.   Thanks for looking

[Ivo]

Literature gives a helpful dating device which is, if the fortified rim is applied seperately (read: ribbon) they will date between 1840 and 1870, and if the rim is folded over they are dated later. Not sure how accurate this is - perhaps not very, as not all glass works switched over to new insights in the same year. The Holmegaard catalogue of 1853 shows a "kopglas" with a folded rim - so much for accuracy.
The Meisenthal catalogue of the 1920s shows cupping jars in three sizes, available both with and without knops.
Roughly you may assume the age of cupping lasted from the early 19th to the early 20th. It seems cupping went out of fashion when WWII introduced bloodshed on a much larger scale. :po:

[Paul S.]

sincere thanks for the in-depth reply  -  very interesting.     Probably I haven't been seeing these things previously, feel sure that I would have remembered  -  then suddently out of the blue today they caught my eye, so hope I now see some more.         I do like pieces with some real history, but am very surprised that an item like this should have been in a commercial catalogue as late as 1920.     Can't imagine the practise offers anything other than mild bruising and perhaps some relaxation.

[Frank]

It is still practised widely having never left the Chines traditional medicine. You can probably find someone local if you want to try it out.... just google cupping thereapy.

[Cathy B]

There's a fantastic Harold Klawans story about cupping. He was a senior neurologist, and his hospital contacted him to try to work out what was going wrong with a delerious older gent who would only speak in Yiddish, who presented with a fever and a really odd rash over his leg. They'd tried every other medical specialist they could think of, and had been through every possible diagnosis from ringworm to eczema on the leg rash. This had gone on for a week and he was steadily worsening. They thought it must have been some sort of exotic virus and were incredibly worried it was contagious.

Klawans realised that the old man had an infection in his leg, which had got so bad that he'd become delerious. And the leg rash? It was several lesions, some apparenly older than others, but all perfectly circular... The old guy had had a sore leg, and so been treating himself using traditional cupping. A course of fairly strong antibiotics and he remembered how to speak English and was fine.

If anyone ever suggests cupping, my advice is don't. I got talked into allowing a Chinese masseur to 'cup' me. Took two weeks for the bruises to heal...