This article examines a cup looted during the Second China War of 1860, as it moved through the hands of different collectors and as it changed its identity and physical form. Identified as the `Skull of Confucius' when it was first exhibited at the London International Exhibition of 1862, the cup, made from the calvaria of a human skull, was richly mounted in gold and jewels. Following its exhibition it quickly changed owners, but soon lost its identity with Confucius; eventually stripped of its mounts, it reverted to being merely a fragment of skull. As such it then became a craniological specimen, examined by those interested in its racial and cultural origins. Pieced together from a variety of sources, the skull-cup's collecting history provides an interesting example of the many ways in which objects can change materially as well as in meaning.
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