It's hard to believe but when RNT released the Julep Chop Cup in the 70's it's the price it was listed at!  It certainly is an interesting cup.

Bruce Smith has kindly written a review over at http://www.cupsandballsmagic.com/RNT-Julep-Chop-Cup.html of this fascinating little cup.

He's also included a snippet of rather interesting insider info on what the cup actually started life as, it may amaze some of you!

Bri

The only question I have is has anyone tried to actually fit a light bulb into one of these "soffits"?

Bill… when you were kind enough to answer some questions on this CC and pointed out to me would a light bulb fit… I kind of looked into this and found some similar old light soffits from that era.  The bottoms were cut out and the switching and bulb receptacle were attached to the bottom (I hope that makes sense). So the glass part of the bulb was all that needed to fit into the Cup.

I am going to double check will the glass part of the bulb fit into the cavity.

Bruce

I've seen some, as well. Magic Christian sold some cup sets at his lectures that were made from cover plates for the bases of the lamps, and they were quite small. But the light bulbs did not fit into these.

The thing to remember is that there couldn't be any contact between the bulb and the soffit, and that the soffit would need to have enough clearance for the fingertips of a normal person to contact the bulb for replacing it. If you look at the soffits or "shades" as we call them, from that period of time, in the US, they were usually a bit larger. However, there is a possibility that these might have been used on a "Tensor" style lamp.