Round, profiled base with a coarse beaded rim, surmounted by a wreath of laurel leaves; on the curve, driven vine leaves, grape clusters, and ears of corn; stem with a vase-shaped node featuring leaf motifs at the base and garlands at the top; stem with a beaded rim; against a cup with stylized leaves, edged with a decorative border; lid with a coiled wreath of stems, adorned on the curve with floral festoons bearing grapes and ears of corn; as a lid crowning, a band bearing a hemisphere with a radiating cross, against which rests a crown of thorns. Inscription in the upright base rim: ‘g.w. van elk 1799’.

This ciborium, a chalice with a lid in which the consecrated hosts are kept, was manufactured in Boxmeer. That fact alone makes the ciborium special.
Boxmeer, on the left bank of the Meuse in the Land of Ravenstein, is currently part of the province of North Brabant. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was a kind of sovereign enclave within the Republic where goldsmiths and silversmiths were active. Boxmeer belonged to the German County of Bergh. Boxmeer did not have city rights and numbered no more than about 1,000 inhabitants in the eighteenth century. Most belonged to the peasantry. A number of Catholic semi-noble families, who had moved here due to Protestant repression, also lived in the free lordship. Anyone who received permission from the Count of Bergh was allowed to settle here.

Boxmeer silver holds a special place within the Republic due to its special status. It is particularly known for its silver for Catholic worship, which was in high demand in the wider area. The craftsmen were not organized into a guild as in other places. Nevertheless, the silversmiths of Boxmeer had their own hallmarks.

The Boxmeer hallmark consists of the coat of arms of the Counts of Bergh, the rulers of Boxmeer: ​​a standing lion encircled by balls and a goat. The goat is derived from a 16th-century Boxmeer alderman's seal that refers to a certain Jan Bock, a Gelderland nobleman who was the first free lord of Boxmeer around 1283. Unlike in other places, the Boxmeer silversmiths did not take their silver to an assay office to have it marked with a city mark and a year letter. Instead, they all had their own stamp of a city mark that they struck into their objects.
The good name of the master silversmith was apparently sufficient guarantee. However, this creates the strange situation where different silversmiths used a different mark of the goat at the same time. To date, at least 8 different goats are known, all of which can be linked to a different silversmith. This changed after the French invasion and the abolition of the guilds. The enclaves of Meghen, Ravenstein, Boxmeer, and Gemert, which originally belonged to the German state of Bergh, were assigned to the Batavian Republic in exchange for three million guilders in war subsidies to France.

This ciborium bears the inscription G.W. van Elk 1799. Based on this inscription, the ciborium is dated to 1799. However, it is quite possible that the object was manufactured slightly earlier.
Petrus Theonville was a well-known Boxmeer silversmith known for his cutlery, purse handles, and ecclesiastical silver. He presumably stopped working in 1807. No works by him are known after that year.
It has been said of his leaping goat to the left that it depicts a snapshot of the times. During the era of the free lordship, all goats can be described as peaceful. At the time of the French Revolution, they exploded as a silent protest against the French occupation.

The liturgical silver manufactured in Boxmeer by Theonville and his colleagues, such as the Raab family of silversmiths, was in high demand in the wider Boxmeer area.

This ciborium was long in the possession of the St. Willibrord Church in Boven Leeuwen.

This church was built in 1916-1917 and consecrated in 1918. In 2023, the church was withdrawn from religious services. The ciborium from 1799 was already part of the inventory of the Waterstaat church that burned down in 1916. In fact, this ciborium is mentioned by Kalf in a description of churches in 1904. In 1796, Leeuwen became an independent parish again under Pastor Gerardus van der Sandt. Initially, services were held in a barn. In 1800, a barn church with a rectory under one roof was built for 13,000 guilders. In 1836, it was replaced by a Waterstaat church with a rectory, which was built on the Waalbandijk west of the Waterstraat. This church at the Boveneind, which crowned the pastorate of Franciscus Verploegen, was intended for both Boven and Beneden-Leeuwen. The ciborium may have been donated shortly after the founding of this church in 1799 by the otherwise unknown G.W. van Elk. The name Van Elk is very well known in Beneden and Boven Leeuwen. The only Van Elk with these exact initials, Gerardus Wilhelmus van Elk, was born in 1800. He may have been a nephew of the donor. Research into the Van Elk genealogy has not yielded anything further to date.

44,5 cm high