Originally posted by Bill Palmer:
I'm not sure what kind of magic trick these cups are supposed to be used for. I seriously doubt that they are for the cups and balls, as their decorations would severely impair any nesting.
While they may have been used for a magic trick, I have a feeling that they were actually originally for serving some kind of drinks.
The silver cups and tray suggests some nice ideas. They are not so standard as they are organic. Perhaps worth the effort to get cleaned up and plated again.
With some machining, the cups could be cut down and reshaped just slightly to permit some of the standard cup moves. Such might be worth the effort. Just cut down a couple of inches they would look larger in proportion to any spherical loads.
A bit more work and you could solidify the rims. Of course that would make the cups unwieldy to drink from and probably destroy their aesthetic integrity. John V. Hope had some brass candle holders of similar shape, and generously cut them down for me to make a set of metal cups. The Japanese set offered is the kind of thing John liked, and were he still around, I'd buy them for him.
Our quirky O/C issues make it seem about right that so many magicians are concerned with seeking a grail from which they can not drink.