Kuba Palm Wine Cup from

i found this description online:

'One of the important art forms identified with competition between titled court members among the Kuba are the carved palm-wine drinking cups. With half of all Bushoong men holding titles in the 1880s, competition for influence was sometimes fierce, and found expression in the elaboration of these essentially commonplace household objects into works of extraordinary beauty.

Because Kuba individuals of high status signaled their largesse by distributing great quantities of palm wine to their friends and affiliates to attract a following, the complexity of such art came under public scrutiny. If, as the myths maintain, the inebriation caused by drinking palm wine led eventually to the formation of the royal line, drinking thus provided the social setting in which office holders were able to play out through art the precariousness of their own positions within this heatedly contested milieu.

There are reports – not confirmed – that these cups might have been used in the poison ordeal. Among the Kuba, as among other African tribes, death was never attributed to natural causes, but to malevolent spirits or to witchcraft. The person suspected of using witchcraft was required to drink poison from such a cup. If he vomited up the drink, he was declared innocent. On the other hand, his death proclaimed his guilt and constituted his punishment.'