"Sweet grape wine fills the luminous cup; we raise it to drink, but the pipa spurs us forth." A single verse f…
"Sweet grape wine fills the luminous cup; we raise it to drink, but the pipa spurs us forth." A single verse from Wang Han's Song of Liangzhou immortalized these vessels in the Tang Dynasty. Luminous cups first appeared in Records of the Ten Continents: the Western Hu presented King Mu of Zhou with an "ever-glowing, ever-full cup"—carved from the "essence of white jade," which shone through the night and overflowed with wine. Today, most luminous cups are fashioned from Qilian dark jade.