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Title: Collecting Old Glass - English and Irish
Author: Yoxall, J. H.
Language: English
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THE COLLECTORS’ POCKET SERIES
EDITED BY SIR JAMES YOXALL, M.P.
COLLECTING
OLD GLASS
THE COLLECTORS’ POCKET SERIES
EDITED BY SIR JAMES YOXALL, M.P.
Each Volume Illustrated. Price 3s 6d net
[Illustration]
COLLECTING OLD GLASS
By J. H. Yoxall
COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES
By J. H. Yoxall
COLLECTING OLD LUSTRE WARE
By W. Bosanko
COLLECTING OLD PEWTER
By H. J. L. J. Massé
COLLECTING OLD PRINTS
By E. Gray
COLLECTING OLD WATER-COLOURS
By R. W. Howes
(Other Volumes in Preparation)
[Illustration: decoration]
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, LTD
COLLECTING
OLD GLASS
ENGLISH AND IRISH
BY J. H. YOXALL
Author of “The Wander Years” “The A B C
about Collecting” “More about Collecting”
_The glass of fashion and the
mould of form_: Hamlet, iii. 1
[Illustration]
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN, LTD
_First published January 1916_
_New Impression March 1925_
_Printed in Great Britain_
PREFACE
I hope the reader may find that this book, though smaller than others
on the same subject, is more helpful and even more comprehensive than
they are; that it deals with the glass articles which they mention
and with others which they omit; that it simplifies and classifies
the study and practice of glass-collecting more than has been done in
print heretofore; and that it can do these things because it is written
out of personal knowledge, gained from much experience, and not from
hearsay or from other books.
Diffuseness has been avoided, but this, I hope, has enabled me to make
the book the more lucid, as well as the more succinct. At any rate,
it affords hints, general rules, and warnings more numerous and more
practical than any published until now; I have also tried to give to
it a quality which reviewers have found present in my other books on
Collecting--that is, a simplicity and clearness of explanation, done
at the most difficult and necessary points, and in an interesting way.
Moreover, this book has had the great advantage of revision (before
printing) by Mr. G. F. Collins, of 53 the Lanes, Brighton, a pupil of
Mr. Hartshorne’s, and well known to all principal collectors of old
glass. Most of the illustrations represent typical pieces in my own
collection, but for some of the finest I have to thank the kindness
of Mrs. Devitt, of Herontye, East Grinstead, a collector indeed. The
illustrations do not represent relative sizes to the same scale.
J. H. YOXALL
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. OLD ENGLISH GLASSWARE 1
II. SEVEN GENERAL GUIDES AND TESTS 14
III. BLOWN WARE 26
IV. CUT, MOULDED, AND ENGRAVED WARE 29
V. OLD COLOURED GLASS 35
VI. OLD DRINKING GLASSES 40
VII. THE VARIOUS TYPES OF STEM 46
VIII. THE VARIOUS SHAPES OF BOWL 56
IX. OTHER STEMMED DRINKING GLASSES 60
X. JACOBITE, WILLIAMITE, AND HANOVERIAN
GLASSES 66
XI. TUMBLERS, TANKARDS, “JOEYS,” AND
“BOOT” GLASSES 73
XII. BOTTLES, DECANTERS, AND JUGS 76
XIII. BOWLS, LIFTERS, SUGAR-CRUSHERS,
SPOONS, ETC. 79
XIV. CANDLESTICKS, LUSTRES, AND LAMPS 81
XV. COMPORTS, SWEETMEAT, JELLY AND
CUSTARD GLASSES 84
XVI. SALT CELLARS, PEPPER BOXES, SUGAR
BASINS, ETC. 88
XVII. MIRRORS, GLASS PICTURES, GLASS KNOBS 90
XVIII. OLD PASTE, GLASS BEADS, AND TAWS 92
XIX. GENERAL HINTS AND WARNINGS 95
INDEX 107
I. OLD ENGLISH GLASSWARE
The glassware made in England and Ireland during the eighteenth and
part of the nineteenth century was the best of the kind ever made. In
quality, tint, feel, and ring the plain blown glass was a beautiful
product, and when it was cut or engraved the decoration was done by
fine craftsmen and often with excellent taste. Old glass has its own
peculiar charm; the dark beauty of the crystal metal, the variety
of form, the bell-like ring when flipped, the satiny feeling of
the surface, the sparkle of the cut facets, and the combination of
gracefulness and usefulness attract a collector: in cabinets it shines,
gleams, glows, and sparkles in a reticent, well-bred way.
[Illustration: (1) MOULDED; (2) COTTON-WHITE; (3) CUT KNOPPED; AND (4)
CUT AND MOULDED CAPTAIN GLASSES]
Then there is attraction in the historical and social traditions which
have gathered around the ware; romance lingers on in the Jacobite
glasses, the Williamite glasses, the Georgian glasses, the rummers and
groggers engraved and drunk from to celebrate the victories of Nelson
or famous elections; and humour resides in many of the relics of the
punch-bowl and six-bottle days. To honour particular occasions one’s
fine old glasses may come out of the cabinet and be used at table
again; I know a collector of “captain glasses” who brings them out for
champagne. For decoration or in use old glass has a refined, artistic,
aristocratic air.
NEITHER TOO RARE NOR TOO PLENTIFUL
The sound of the past seems to throb in the ring of this frail and
dainty ware; at your touch the cry of the bygone seems heard again.
Because of fragility, enough of eighteenth-century glass has not
lasted on to make it common, and yet so much of it is still extant
that a collector’s hunt for it is by no means a hopeless quest. It may
still be acquired at reasonable prices from dealers in antiques, and a
hunter for it in odd corners, who buys in shillings, not in pounds, may
reasonably hope to pick up many fine specimens for next to nothing even
yet. Four years ago I bought a fine drawn cordial glass for 2d. Within
the past three years I have myself bought a perfect captain glass for
3s. 6d.; within the last year I have bought six punch-lifters for
17s. 6d. in all, uncommon as these bibulous old siphons are. A large
Bristol coloured-glass paper-weight may cost you £3 in a dealer’s shop,
because three years ago they began to be a “rage,” but within the past
two years I have bought a Bristol glass article, equally beautiful in
colour and glass-flowers, and much rarer, for 2s. Footless coaching
glasses and thistle-shaped fuddling glasses are seldom seen, even on a
dealer’s shelves, but I have found one of each, in odd corners, for 6d.
THE TIME TO COLLECT IS NOW
[Illustration: WATERFORD GLASS ENGRAVED AND CUT: NOTE THE FANLIKE
EDGING AND THE “STAR” CUT TO EDGE OF BASE; ALSO THE DEEP CUTTING OF THE
FLORAL ORNAMENT]
Now, if ever, is the time to collect old glass rather cheaply, for
already the prices of it are mounting in a remarkable way. Thirty
years ago old wine glasses engraved with roses, rosebuds, and
butterflies--rose glasses, as they are called--could be bought for
half-a-crown apiece or less--dozens of them; this price has multiplied
nearly twentyfold. Waterford cut-glass grows more and more dear to
buy, from dealers who know it when they possess it--they will soon be
selling it as if it were antique silver, at so much per ounce--but only
last year I bought in a provincial town a captain glass of this ware
for 15s., though £8 was the price asked for one just like it in the
West End. Now, if ever, is the time for a beginner to take up this line
of collecting; old English and Irish glass will never again be so easy
to find at reasonable prices as it is now.
SUCH CONNOISSEURSHIP NOT DIFFICULT
Collecting is a form of education, but it is not difficult to become a
knowledgeable collector of old glass. Counterfeits are sent out by the
thousand, forgeries lie in wait, totally new glassware, imitative of
the old, is on sale in hundreds of curio dealers’ shops, some of them
otherwise honest and respectable; but only ignorance or carelessness
need be taken in. A little study, a little observation, a little care,
and the beginner will soon be able to avoid mistakes. Connoisseurship
in old glass is less difficult than it is in old china, for example;
porcelain or earthenware collecting is more various, more detailed,
has reference to longer periods of manufacture, and involves much
more specific knowledge than glass-collecting does. Yet I have known
two or three collectors of porcelain who declined to begin collecting
old glass because, they said, they would “never dare”--as if an
almost miraculous skill were needed to become a connoisseur in old
glass! In point of fact, this is the easiest hobby to study and know;
glass-collecting requires an eye for the different shades and tints of
the metal, a finger-tip for the feel of it, an ear for the ring of it,
and not much money as yet, and practically that is all. There are no
trade-marks to puzzle or deceive you; there is no such distinction,
difficult to understand and master, as between “soft” china and “hard.”
At present old glass is easy to know, and not difficult to find.
I propose in this book to _give general hints, “tips,” and instructions
applicable to every variety of old glass; to explain the seven
principal tests of genuine age and antique make; to prepare the
beginner to go out collecting glass with the infallible rules and
principles for it fixed in his mind_. Equipped with these, anyone may
examine, test, and if satisfactory buy any vessel of glass which he or
she may find in any odd corner. I am not writing the book for the rich,
but for people with more taste and cultivation than money, and though I
deprecate “collecting” for the sake of selling again at a profit, I may
well point out that old English and Irish glass, bought cheaply now,
may become an investment _de père de famille_; the collector may have
the joy of finding it, the continual pleasure of owning it, and yet
know that it will turn out to be “good business” for his heirs, when
the sale comes, at the end.
ADVANTAGES ASSOCIATED WITH GLASS
The collecting of old glass is not yet systematized; there are no
dealers’ catalogues of it or prices current. For the next few years
this advantage will continue in connexion with old glass. Every dealer
knows the high price which square-marked Worcester china can command;
every second-hand bookseller knows the price current of first editions,
or copies of rare books; but such is not the case with old glass as
yet. Systematization has hardly begun; there has been little research
into the history of makes and the names of makers. Here is another
advantage for a collector: he may discover things of that kind at
present unknown, and thus attach his name to the history of old glass
which will some day be written. A local collector may at no great cost
make a donation of his treasures to the local museum. There is no
public collection of Newcastle-made glass at Newcastle, for instance,
or of Sunderland-made glass at Sunderland, and no local antiquary has
studied the history of the fine glass products made on the Tyne and
the Wear. Nobody knows which kinds of glass were made at Norwich or
Lynn. A history of Stourbridge glass-making and glassware has yet to be
written. So that research, that additional delight of collecting, is
more open in connexion with glass than with any other well-known “line.”
COLLECTABLE GLASS ARTICLES
[Illustration: LARGE MUG AND COIN MUG, IMITATING OLD SILVER SHAPES]
The number and diversity of old glass articles may be indicated by the
following incomplete list: wine glasses, beer glasses, cider glasses,
rummers, cordial glasses, liqueur glasses, tumblers, firing glasses,
coaching glasses, fuddling glasses, beakers, mugs, tankards, champagne
glasses, grog glasses, Masonic glasses, goblets, Joey glasses, “boot”
glasses, “yards of ale,” toy glasses; flasks, decanters, trays and
waiters; punch or salad bowls, trifle bowls; wine bottles, spirit
bottles; jugs, punch-lifters, decanter stands; jelly glasses, custard
glasses, flip glasses, syllabub glasses; fruit baskets, centre-pieces,
sweetmeat glasses, captain glasses, comports or sweetmeat glass stands,
epergnes, tazzas; salt cellars, sugar castors, pepper boxes; caddy
sugar bowls; lamps, lanterns, chandeliers, candlesticks, nightlight
glasses, taper holders; finger bowls, wine coolers; oil bottles,
vinegar bottles, mustard bottles; jars, pickle jars; tea trays,
preserve pots; vases, covered vases; rolling-pins, knife rests, knife
and fork handles, spoons, sugar crushers; butter pots, celery glasses;
weather glasses, chemical glasses, eye baths, witch-balls, porringers,
posset vessels, holy-water vessels; door-stops, paper-weights; mirrors,
knobs, glass pictures, bellows-shaped flasks, lustres, paste jewels,
beads, taws, toy birds, animals, tobacco pipes, bellows on stands,
walking-sticks, rapiers, and other elaborate baubles and oddities
made for ornament or as _tours de force_. There seems to have been a
Glass-makers’ Festival held at Newcastle some hundred years ago, and
it was for exhibition then that most of the freak glass toys and
ornaments were made.
Much old English and Irish glass was contemporaneously sent to the
American market, and the following articles were advertised as on
sale at New York in the year 1773: “Very Rich Cut Glass Candlesticks,
Cut Glass Sugar Boxes and Cream Potts, Wine, Wine-and-Water Glasses,
and Beer Glasses, with Cut Shanks, Jelly and Syllabub Glasses, Glass
Salvers, also Cyder Glasses, Orange and Top Glasses, Glass Cans, Glass
Cream Buckets and Crewets, Royal Arch Mason Glasses, Globe and Barrel
Lamps, etc.” The “etc.” would be capacious; it would include most of
the articles mentioned in the paragraph just preceding this, and such
things as crystal globes to be filled with water through which a candle
might throw and condense its rays, for sewing or lace-making purposes,
at night.
[Illustration: (1) BRISTOL; AND (2) NAILSEA COLOURED GLASS WITCH-BALLS]
A collector ignores window-glass, unless he can come upon stained
glass, purchasing, for £5 perhaps, a leaded square or oval of
sixteenth-century Swiss or German painted glass, to hang in one of
his windows. A collector ignores plate-glass, except in the form of
mirrors, perhaps. A collector ignores carboys, and also ordinary
bottles, but he acquires when he can one of the thick, stumpy, almost
black glass bottles in which Georgian people bottled their own claret
or port, imported in the cask. It adds interest to an antique bookcase,
corner cupboard, or cabinet if the panes, or some of them, show the
slight curvature characteristic before perfectly flat sheet-glass could
be cast; and there are some old panes in which the oxides have turned
to a violet colour--a silversmith’s shop nearly opposite the top end of
the Haymarket still displays some--which are of interest to-day. There
used to be glass objects which, I suppose, we shall never come upon
now: the “mortar” or nightlight-glass, of the kind which stood beside
the last sleep of Charles I, and the “singing-glasses” which Pepys
heard in 1668, when he “had one or two singing-glasses made, which
make an echo to the voice, the first I ever saw; but so thin, that the
very breath broke one or two of them.” These, and many other beautiful
pieces of old glass, are for ever gone out of reach.
But the hunter may come upon pieces which came into existence before
Queen Anne died: Jacobean glass, of the reign of Charles II at latest,
is occasionally found. For a guinea I obtained a fine sacramental
vessel in purfled and wreathed glass bearing the symbol of the Trinity
(see next page); for 5s. a pistol-shaped scent bottle; and for 12s. 6d.
a hand lamp, all three of Jacobean date.
THE HUNT FOR IT
In fact, the limits in glass-collecting are not yet fixable; you never
know what quaint or rare thing you may not come upon in old glass.
Other lines of collecting are already systematized, and part of the
systematization is a limiting of what you may expect to find and a
raising of what you may have to pay. With glass there are no such
boundaries, at present; anything out of the ordinary in shape, purpose,
or date, may be acquired, and should be--the uncommon pieces are the
best--though often because a piece is quite unusual, it will be offered
you at a very low price. The smaller dealers know that from half a
guinea to a couple of guineas is what they may charge for an old wine
glass, according to the knobs or the spiral in its stem, but they do
not know any fixed price for less common specimens, and they will sell
at a hundred per cent. profit on the very small charges they themselves
have paid.
[Illustration: COMMUNION VESSEL, SHOWING PURFLING ON THE HANDLE, AND
“WRITHEN” ORNAMENT ON THE BOWL (DATE CHARLES II)]
Armed with knowledge of the general tests which I give in the next
chapter, a collector may enter a dealer’s shop near Bond Street or
a marine stores in the Old Kent Road, a broker’s at Hackney or a
cabinet-maker’s warehouse in a country town, a second-hand furniture
shop at Hammersmith or the Caledonian market on a Friday; he may look
into a butler’s pantry, peer into a cupboard in a kitchen corner,
search amidst the dust of a lumber-room, or reach to the deep interior
of a farmhouse dresser or sideboard; and almost always he will come
upon a collectable bit of old glass. He may hope to come upon an old
crystal gazing-ball, used by fashionable fortune-tellers a century ago;
or even one of the old glass eggs which eighteenth-century ladies held
in their hands to keep their palms cool for a lover’s kiss.
THE COLLECTOR’S RANGE
[Illustration: MASONIC ENGRAVED GOBLET, WITH CUT STEM; THE GROOVES OF
THE CUTTING ENCROACHING ON THE BOWL]
The beginner should recognize from the first that the range of the
collector of old glass is not yet defined; that the practical hints and
rules given in this book may be applied to _any_ piece of glass, and
should be, no matter how unusual its form or inexplicable now its use
in its time. During the next few years things which now seem oddities,
because they are so unusual, may become particularly sought after,
and valued because they are rare. I therefore advise the beginner to
be a general and diffusing collector, leaving no genuine old piece
unsnapped-up which comes within his reach and means. At present cut
Waterford glass and spiral-stemmed blown wine glasses are the things
most sought after by glass collectors, but they may not be so a few
years hence. I do not mean that they will ever drop in selling value
now, but I anticipate that the selling value of other glass articles,
rather neglected now, may appreciate; that is why I recommend the
practice of general and diffusive collecting and a wide range. But
if a collector prefers to specialize, he may set out to collect wine
glasses only, or inscribed glasses only, or what-not in that way; he
may go in for cut-glass only, or blown glass only, or coloured glass
only, or toys and eccentricities only; he may choose geographically,
collecting Irish glass only, or English glass only, or Bristol glass
only, and so forth. In any case his range will be limited by certain
dates; he will very seldom come upon a piece so old as the reign of
Charles II, and he will not care to collect glassware made so late
as the year in which Victoria came to the throne. With Venice-made
glass this book has nothing to do. Much old Dutch-made glass exists in
England, but the student of this book will be enabled to detect it, and
not unintentionally to acquire it believing it to be English made.
Bohemian-made glass, cut and coloured, is seldom taken up by collectors
here. The range in these islands is for English and Irish glass, for it
is the ware most readily collectable, most likely to increase in value,
and to be most readily sold when a collection comes to be dispersed;
I mention this latter consideration because any collector not wealthy
must, in justice to his heirs and dependents, in this matter “look to
the end.”
II. SEVEN GENERAL GUIDES AND TESTS
Setting forth to collect old glassware, therefore, what general guides
may the beginner use, and what reliable tests can he apply?
There are seven: (1) the _tint_ of the glass; (2) the _sound_ of the
glass; (3) the _quality_ of the glass metal (or material); (4) the
_weight_; (5) the _signs of use and wear_; (6) the _pontil-mark_; and
(7) the _workmanship_.
These seven suffice to equip the beginner. But as he collects and gains
experience, many details and developments of them will come to his
knowledge, which I shall refer to in their place.
It should be remembered that there are no maker’s marks to go by in
glass, as there are in porcelain, earthenware, Sheffield plate, or
pewter; and no signatures, as there are in paintings, drawings, and
etchings.
1. THE TINTS OF OLD GLASS
Old glass is _darkly_ brilliant. It is not _whitely_ crystal as
modern glass is; the eye can only see what it looks for, ever, and to
uninstructed eyes all glass is merely glass-colour, but the experienced
collector sees that there are many different tints and tinges in the
crystal of glass. These tints and tinges are the chief guide, test, and
principle by which one judges whether a piece of glass is one of the
nineteenth century, eighteenth century, or seventeenth century, as the
case may be.
To judge the tint, place the piece of glass upon a white tablecloth,
near to a tumbler or decanter known to be modern because of recent
purchase from an ordinary vendor of household glass. The eye, looking
for it, will then notice in the two pieces of glass a striking
difference of tint, if one of them is old, that is; the old piece is
not only darker than the white of the tablecloth, but darker than the
piece of modern glass. And _the darker (or sootier) its tint the older
the glass_, as a rule. Tint or tinge is a constant feature in old
glass, and an obvious feature directly the eye knows what to look for.
Varieties of dark tint may be detected, and by these varieties the bit
of glass may be dated, its period determined, and its age assigned.
[Illustration: HUNTING GOBLET, DOME FOOT]
If you place near each other, upon a white damask cloth, a glass of
Charles II date, a William and Mary glass, a George III glass, and a
Victorian glass, you will notice a darkening and then a whitening in
tint (though not a brightening) as your eye travels from the oldest
glass to the most modern. By “tint” or “tinge” I do not mean “colour,”
in the sense of red or green or blue; I will deal with coloured glass
later on. By “tint” or “tinge” I mean the shade of leaden, darkish
hue in the metal from which the glass article was blown or moulded.
This tint or tinge was inherent in the molten glass, before shaping
and cooling began. The metal or raw material was mixed according to
recipe--each glassworks had its own recipe--and one of the materials
was lead. The older the Georgian glass, the more impure the metal--that
is, the fuller of lead oxides--and therefore the darker; what are
called improvements in glass-mixing have gradually eliminated the
oxides, and therefore the leaden tint or tinge also; it is astonishing
how many different shades and tinges of darkness (in that sense) a
cabinet of old glass can show. In a few glasses the bowl is pale
sapphire or aquamarine colour, the stem being the tint of plain glass.
[Illustration: “TRAFALGAR” GLASS: RUMMER ON BALUSTER STEM AND RAISED
FOOT; EXAMPLE OF ELABORATE ENGRAVING]
The glass collector exercises his sight and applies the test; it
enables him to detect a counterfeit, though in shape and general
appearance it imitates the genuine antique; it is too whitely crystal,
too tintless to be old. Curio-shop windows at Brighton, for instance,
are full of frauds in glass, chiefly cut-glass, or glass moulded to
resemble cut-glass; but the chalky-white tint betrays and condemns
them, and the instructed collector will not be taken in. Also he will
recognize genuine Waterford glass by its own tinge of colour, and
genuine Cork glass in a similar way; he will see that old Dutch-made
glass, when thick, has a smeary, milk-and-watery tint, and when thin
has a flashy, meretricious absence of deep tinting: he will learn that
old Stourbridge glass was whiter than antique Bristol or Newcastle
glass, and sometimes was milky-white; in course of time and practice
he will come to be able to “date” and “place” a piece of old glass at
sight, as well as instantly to reject a fraud.
_The tints of Irish-made glass._ Glass made at Waterford, late in the
eighteenth century and early in the nineteenth, was a fine product,
often exquisitely cut: it is distinguishable in more than one way, but
has a characteristic tinge which, once seen, is unmistakable. I cannot
find exact words for it, it is not a blue nor a green nor a blackish
tint, but is something of all three, and was due to excessive presence
of oxide of lead. Nobody has done any research as to Irish-made glass,
and people suppose that Cork-made glass resembled the Waterford glass,
but that is very unlikely, because each factory mixed according to
its own recipe, and also used a different variety of each of the
raw materials common to all glass. In point of fact, Cork glass is
“duller” than Waterford, and it has quite a different, a pale, almost
dun or yellowish, tinge, particularly visible in the thicker parts;
a good many lustre-ornaments seem to have been made at Cork. Belfast
glass was yellowish, too, if we may judge by the tint of Williamite
glasses.
2. THE SOUND OF OLD GLASS
[Illustration: EXAMPLE OF FINE QUALITY ROSE GLASS. COTTON-WHITE SPIRAL.
NOTE THE ROSE LEAVES AND STEMS]
Perhaps because more lead was used in the “metal” or raw material, but
at any rate for some distinctive reason, _old English and Irish-made
glass has a more musical sound than any made abroad_. Flick or flip
with your finger-nail, or pinch near your ear, a piece of this old
ware, and _a vibrant, resonant, and lingering ring is audible_. The
thinner the part of the glass you flick the more the sound, of course;
but something of a ring should come from almost any part of the
article. Another way of producing this characteristic sound is to keep
on rubbing a wetted finger around the edge of the bowl of a wine glass
or finger bowl, till rhythmic vibration is set up, and the sound steals
forth. And it is a _bell-like, musical note_, almost the F sharp or G
sharp, or A or B of the 4th octave in a pianoforte keyboard: darkish
glass with this resonance is almost sure to be old English or Irish
made. Much eighteenth-century Dutch glass is still extant here, and is
often mistaken for English; but it need not be: thin or thick, _Dutch
glass sends out no lingering resonance_, long, clear, musical, and
true. _Dutch glass tinkles_ when you flip it, but the sound is dead a
few seconds after being born. The sound test for old English or Irish
glass is, Does it ring with a musical note that throbs, sings, and
lingers in a way to delight the ear? _The sound of old Dutch, French,
Italian, or German glass is cracked, so to speak_, though the vessel
itself is not; but
_O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!_
are lines which Tennyson might have written to describe the music of
old English and Irish glass; too much stress cannot be laid upon this
test--the _lasting_ note is the criterion.
So that now, with both tint and sound to guide us, we need not be taken
in by modern copies or old Dutch glass.
3. THE QUALITY OF OLD GLASS METAL
[Illustration: EXAMPLE OF FINE QUALITY; SHOWING THE BUTTERFLY AND THE
COTTON-WHITE WREATHING AROUND THE CENTRAL TUBE]
Italians and Frenchmen came to England in the sixteenth century to
teach the art and mystery of glass-making to our islanders; yet neither
old Italian nor French glass metal has the _quality_ of old English
and Irish glass metal. The glassware made here between the reigns of
Queen Anne and Queen Victoria had the best _quality_ of any glass
ever made in the world. But what is _quality_ in this connexion?
It means material, but it also means the manipulation of material
and the effect produced. The glass made during the reigns of the
four Georges was called “flint glass” and “lead glass”--misnomers,
perhaps, but I need not take up space here in discussing that; the
important point is that the _quality_ of the metal and the skill
of the manipulation resulted in thinness, rigidity, shapeliness, a
velvety surface, dark sheen, brilliancy, radiancy of facets when cut,
and the vibrant, musical ring of the eighteenth-century glass. Glass
made under Charles II was not so dark, and Victorian glass was whiter;
Victorian and modern English glass is of excellent quality, but is
uniform to almost a painful degree. It lacks character and diversity;
the Georgian glass was individual and original, so to speak. There were
faults in it--little air-blobs, or vesicles, that feel like pimples
on the surface, or show as bubbles within it; striations, like lines
of fibre, also; and deviations from the strict mathematic line or
curve, which were due to hand-work. But if you examine contemporary
Dutch-made, French-made, or Italian-made glass, you notice that the
same defects exist, and more numerously, while there is a flimsiness,
or a lumpiness, or a smeary look and harsh feel which are absent from
old English and Irish glass.
A specked, pimply surface, and a dull thickness and clumsy lumpiness
or flashy thin lightness, are found in old Dutch-made glass; and this,
taken in conjunction with the absence of true ring, enables a collector
to reject the old ware sent over from Holland. _The quality of the
English and Irish glass metal comes out in the surface_, too, a little;
the fingers feel the surface of an old blown wine glass to be _cool_,
_smooth_, _hard_, _and yet velvety_; while the surface of Waterford
cut-glass has a _silky feel_.
4. THE WEIGHT OF OLD GLASS
In his privately circulated book on “English Baluster Stemmed Glasses
of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” Mr. Francis Buckley aptly
says that “English-made glasses of the first period were all light in
weight and cloudy in appearance. Some time between the Restoration and
the end of the seventeenth century, but when precisely it is difficult
to say, the English glass-makers began to try experiments with a view
to removing from their glasses this dull and cloudy appearance. Their
object was to produce a substance like crystal; and this object they
eventually achieved by introducing into their metal a large quantity of
lead.” This gave the characteristic weight.
The old Dutch glass seems light in weight, even when it is thick; _old
English and Irish glass seems relatively heavy_ even when it is thin.
_Waterford glass is especially heavy._ These differences in weight are
probably due to differences in the materials used for mixing the metal;
but whatever the cause, they aid the collector to know the real from
the counterfeit, and the old English from the Dutch. Even the thick,
clumsy glasses made here in the reign of William and Mary seem more
weighty than those otherwise exactly similar which were then brought
over from Holland.
5. THE SIGNS OF USE AND WEAR
Many fantastic pieces of old glass were made as curiosities or
ornaments, but most old glass was made for use. Glass is easily
scratched; as the wine glasses and decanters were set down upon
the hard, polished mahogany of dinner-tables, after the cloth was
drawn, and were moved, the feet of the wine glasses and the bases
of the decanters become scratched thereby. Lustre-ornaments, glass
candlesticks, or glass vases which stood upon marble or hard wood
mantelpieces, being moved when maidservants were dusting, became
scratched at the base. The collector will therefore carefully examine
those parts of a piece of glass which, if it is old, may be expected
to show the signs of use and wear caused by contact and movement upon
hard surfaces; it is well to do this by the aid of a pocket-lens--which
ought to be a glass collector’s constant companion.
_In a genuine old piece the scratches are numerous, do not all run the
same way, and are dust-coloured, more or less._ Most counterfeits show
no scratches at all, but _the more elaborate forgeries show artificial
scratches; these usually run all one way, however, or seem all to have
been made together at the same time, and sometimes these artificial
scratchings appear in parts of the glass which would not be exposed to
marking of the kind when in use_, as, for instance, inside the bowls.
Yet it is not wise to condemn and refuse as a fraud a piece of glass
which shows the other four or five general evidences of genuineness
simply because only slight scratching is evident; for the glass may
have been standing in a cupboard unused for many years, its nose put
out of joint by some change of fashion in table-ware soon after it
had been bought, and have passed into a collector’s cabinet before
coming into your hands for examination. Nor is it safe to suppose that
the more the scratches the older the piece; it may have had more than
the common amount of usage. If the glass has a “folded foot” or a
“ring-base” to stand on, the scratches will be at the very edge of the
foot, or on the ring, just where it touched the table or mantelpiece,
and there only.
6. THE PONTIL-MARK
I mention this last because it does not apply to all old glass; it does
not apply to glass that was cast or moulded, but it applies to all old
blown glass, and is a very important test and guide indeed.
The pontil-mark is either a depression in the glass, shallow, about
the size of the third finger-end, or a lump about that size, standing
up from the level of the glass around it. The pontil-mark indicates
_first_ that the piece of glass was originally blown, and _second_ that
before removing the blow-pipe the workman, as usual, attached the blown
glass to a pontil. The pontil or punt is an iron rod, joined to the
vessel by a little melted glass while the vessel is still hot. When
the time comes for taking away the pontil, it is done by contact with
cold water, which causes the glass to contract around the pontil-end
and the pontil to become detached. Glass vessels which were blown,
only, show the depression or the lump accordingly: blown-glass vessels
which were afterwards “cut” show it in part only, or not at all, if the
glass-cutter removed it: vessels neither blown nor cut, but cast in
a mould, do not show it because they never had it. In the eighteenth
century and the first quarter of the nineteenth, glass moulding seldom
took place; _so that the presence of the pontil-mark, whether it be a
hollow or a lump, usually indicates age in the vessel which shows it_.
[Illustration: UNDER-SIDE OF WINE GLASS FOOT, SHOWING THE PONTIL-MARK
AND THE HEMMED OR “FOLDED FOOT” EDGE]
In the oldest glass the pontil-hole is flaked with something which
rather resembles mica. In the oldest wine glasses the pontil-lump
stands out knobbily. In every case there are signs of the local
fracture. As a rule, the older the glass the bigger and rougher the
pontil-mark.
7. THE WORKMANSHIP
The sensible, practical adaptation to purpose and the workmanlike make
of English and Irish old glass afford another test; compared with our
native product, French glass of the same period seems meagre, and Dutch
flimsy or clumsy; Italian is fantastic and tawdry. The French and the
Italian ware was often gilded, the Dutch painted: these are features
seldom seen on English and Irish glass. In place of gilding or other
added external decoration the island ware presented a substance neither
too thin nor too thick, bowls perfectly rounded, stems strong and stout
but not bulky, too tall, or too short; feet that hold on to the table
well, and are not warped and uneven. In the freak and toy pieces, too,
the excellence of the workmanship is obvious.
III. BLOWN WARE
The blow-pipe is not so old an implement as the potter’s wheel, but it
seems to have been used 5000 years ago, in Egypt. Pliny first gave the
fanciful account of Phœnician mariners accidentally fusing carbonate
of soda with sea-sand; Dr. Johnson commented on that as follows: “Who,
when he saw the first sand or ashes by a casual intenseness of heat
melted into a metallic form, rugged with excrescences, and clouded
with impurities, would have imagined that in this shapeless lump lay
concealed so many conveniences of life as would in time constitute a
great part of the happiness of the world? Yet by some such fortuitous
liquefaction was mankind taught to procure a body at once in a high
degree solid and transparent; which might admit the light of the sun
and exclude the violence of the wind; which might extend the view
of the philosopher to new ranges of existence, supply the decays of
nature, and succour old age with subsidiary sight.”
Perhaps the first glassware was cast, or moulded, and there is no
record of when or where the blow-pipe was first used. Ancient glass
beads were probably made by moulding: probably the first glass ever
made in England (the windows at Wearmouth Church, in A.D. 675) was
cast. Not until the sixteenth century, apparently, was any blown
glass made in England, and none of it remains both extant and intact;
collectors are fortunate who come upon a piece of date so early as
the first half of the seventeenth century, even; but from the last
few years of the seventeenth century to the first few years of the
nineteenth century inclusive, English and Irish blown glass was the
best in the world. Therefore it is the _blown_ pieces which are the
most characteristic, whether blown only or blown and afterwards
engraved or cut. And the blown pieces, being intended for use, are
the more numerous, and the more readily collected; the cut and
engraved pieces, being for ornament, were more costly, and therefore
fewer--though perhaps they have been more carefully preserved.
[Illustration: MOULDED CADDY SUGAR-BASIN, AND JACOBEAN HAND-LAMP WITH
BALUSTER STEM. NOTE THE CLOUDY TINGE]
Drinking glasses are the most favoured aim of collectors and at
present are the old glass objects most frequently offered, but as
glass-collecting becomes more popular other glass objects are brought
out of cupboards and places where they have been lying neglected;
and my counsel is that a collector should acquire any piece of old
blown-glass ware which he can.
IV. CUT, MOULDED, AND ENGRAVED WARE
A collector nervous about frauds should take note that _counterfeits
of old cut-glass are much more numerous than counterfeits of old blown
glass_; the latter is forged, in the shape of wine glasses with spiral
stems, but not at all successfully. In cut-glass there is also the
confusion with moulded glass to beware of, but the finger feels the
edges of cut-glass to be slightly rough--rather like woodwork edges
not sand-papered off--and the eye can detect a difference between
what was cut and what was moulded. In fine old cut-glass the surface
feels silky, and the touch slips upon it where the cutting is shallow;
moulded glass has a wavy, rounded feel. Cut-ware glass seems to be the
more popular “line” of collecting in glass, so it is well to consider
the kinds of cutting here; remembering all the while the tests of tint,
etc., as between the old and the new.
THE ORIGIN OF CUT-GLASS
English-and Irish-made glass, being heavier and better quality than
any other, lent itself to cutting especially well; but probably the
chief cause of the development of cut-glass here was the excise duty,
which was levied on the plain manufactured article, so to speak--the
glassware as the blower or moulder turned it out. The excise on that
having been paid, all additional value given to the ware afterwards
was non-taxable; therefore cutting came into vogue, and the glass
cut in these islands became the best in the world. Of all cut-glass
“Waterford” was the most beautiful; its specific gravity was the
greatest, and deep cutting could take place without the ware being
clumsily heavy to begin with.
THE “WATERFORD” STYLE OF CUTTING
Cork, Dublin, and Belfast cut-glass resembles Waterford cut-glass
in everything but tint and weight, and perhaps it was the Celtic
strain in the Irish glass-cutters’ blood which gave a more than
English freedom and fantasy to their art. At any rate, the style of
their cutting may be described as “curved” and “arabesque”; it was
also shallow, generally; flowing lines and slight hollows, flattish
rounded curves, and interlacings are evident; stems and candlesticks
are “whittled” rather than cut deeply; rims are often surrounded by
little semicircles, the edge of each semicircle being cut into angles
with sharp points; sometimes these resemble half-open fans. The less
the amount of cut ornament, the earlier the piece, as a rule. There
is English style diamond-shaped cutting in Irish glass, and some
“hob-nail” cutting--shaped flat ends standing out as hob-nails do
from boot soles: there is some “strawberry” cutting; but as a rule, a
fluent, curving, arabesquing style of cutting, with parallel horizontal
lines, hollow prisms, upright fluting, and parallel vertical lines in
panels, the latter sometimes resembling basket-plaiting, characterize
Waterford cut-glass.
THE “STOURBRIDGE” CUTTING
The Stourbridge glass-cutters, on the other hand, rather over-did and
abused the deep, regular, machine-like repetition of the “diamond” and
the “hob-nail” and the “pomegranate.” Sometimes, however, the cutting
was flat and flowing, and a festoon-like, hung-tapestry-like form may
be seen.
[Illustration: (1 AND 2) WATERFORD, AND (3) STOURBRIDGE CUT-GLASS BOWLS]
THE “BRISTOL” CUTTING
Bristol glass-cutters went in for depth, but also for fantasy: a
leaflike arrangement may be seen: the flowing lines in “Bristol”
cutting are not so fine and curved as they are in Waterford glass.
“NEWCASTLE” CUTTING
Perhaps the “thistle” glasses, so popular in Scotland, were
made and cut at Newcastle, the nearest glass-making centre: but
“thistle cutting” does not mean cut like a thistle; it means minute
diamond-shape cuts upon a vessel conventionally resembling a
thistle-head in shape.
THE STAR AT THE BASE
In old cut-glass a star is often found, cut in the base of the vessel,
_under_ it; usually the old glass-cutters extended this star to the
very edges of the base. In more modern cutting the rays of the star do
not extend so far.
[Illustration: EXAMPLE OF “POMEGRANATE” AND “DIAMOND” CUTTING: NOTE THE
“STAR” ALSO, CUT TO THE EDGE, AND THE SCRATCH ACROSS THE BASE CAUSED BY
WEAR]
MOULDED GLASS
About 1850 moulded imitations of cut-glass begun to oust the more
expensive originals, and moulded glass of that date and since then is
not worth a collector’s attention. But _old_ moulded glass, with the
right tint in it, is worth acquiring; in the shape of candlesticks, for
instance.
Cutting could be done, and was done, either upon glassware originally
blown, or upon glass originally moulded--that is, cast in a mould.
Sometimes the stem or shank and foot were left untouched while the
upper part of the vessel was cut. Moulded glass uncut shows no
acuteness of edge nor sharpness in the depressions. Modern moulded
glass is often very elaborate, however, and the beginner may readily be
deceived.
ENGRAVED GLASS
Some part of the engraving on some glasses was really cutting: in
roses which form part of the decoration of finely engraved glasses,
the finger feels plane after plane of depression, where the engraver
deeply cut away the metal to imitate the petals of the rose. When the
engraving goes as deep as this, or deeper than usual, the effect is to
give a dust colour to the engraved work, which helps one to be sure
that the object before one is not an old plain glass recently “engraved
up” with a Jacobite or other design to make it sell for more money.
[Illustration: UNDER-SIDE OF BASIN, SHOWING THE STAR CUT TO THE EDGE]
But as a rule engraving is a surface operation, done with a diamond or
on the wheel, or by sandblast, or by use of acids. Where the engraving
is flat, not cut in, the original greyish-white effect may long remain;
a collector need not suppose that the engraving is recent because the
tint of it is not brownish, a colour due to years and accumulations
of dust. Indeed, the rougher and coarser the recent engraving the more
likely dust to settle _in_ it, as well as upon it, and to give it a
dusty tint. Really fine old engraving can remain almost as fresh in
appearance and tint as it ever was, even till to-day. _And the natural
tint of glass engraving resembles the tint of ground glass._ Of course,
when the polishing-wheel was applied, either to parts or to the whole
of the engraving, this greyish-white tint was polished away.
The polishing-wheel was also used to remove the pontil-mark (when it
was a lump or knob) from the feet of wine and other glasses.
Dutch or German engraved old glass shows more _smeary_ in the engraved
part than English or Irish glassware does.
V. OLD COLOURED GLASS
At Bristol, Nailsea, Wrockwardine, and perhaps at Norwich, glassware
of various colours was made. There are collectors who care for nothing
else but coloured glass; there are collectors who only care for
coloured glass paper-weights; there are collectors who will not buy
coloured glass at all.
“BRISTOL”
Bristol coloured glass is the most sought for. There are several
varieties. The rarest is the opaque, whitish glass which rather
resembles porcelain or Battersea enamel in general tint, and is painted
upon as if it were porcelain or enamel: held to a good light this
ware is seen to be rather opalescent, and might be dubbed opal glass.
Edkins, a painter of Bristol delft, used delft-like colours and designs
on this opal glass; wreaths of flowers (the rose and the fuchsia in
particular) and flourishes in the Louis XV style are characteristic.
Cups and saucers, teapots, tumblers, bowls and jugs, cruet vessels, and
candlesticks of this ware exist, though few; the last-named imitated
Battersea enamel candlesticks in shape and decoration. A characteristic
of this glass is ridges or waves on the surface, detected by the
finger. The earliest examples have domed and folded feet.
Less rare, but rare, are the wine glasses with red and white or blue
and white spirals in the stems which were made at Bristol; if the white
is not cotton-white but greyish, however, such a glass is probably old
Dutch.
[Illustration: BRISTOL COLOURED GLASS PEPPER BOX, SHOWING THE ELABORATE
FLOWERS, SUCH AS ARE SEEN IN PAPER-WEIGHTS]
Fine tableware of transparent blue, blue-green, red, and purple was
made at Bristol; the blue is a peculiar, unique blue, imitated but
never well reproduced; where the glass is thick, it, held to the
light, shows a Royal purple, and where thin it is almost a sea-blue.
Egg-cups of this ware are handsome. Bristol red glass is of a ruby hue,
with not so much vermilion in it as in Bohemian glass: there is also
“cherry-red” glass. Bristol blue and red glass was sometimes touched
with gilt, in lettering and lines; this did not wear well except when
embossed.
Bristol produced the finest glass paper-weights--of a size and shape
to fill the palm of one’s hand if only the wrist and finger-tips
are touching the paper--and at the base of these you see flowers of
coloured glass, bright and various in hue, and rendered with wonderful
skill; of the same kind of mosaic or tessellated glass is a small
pepper pot in my possession, a very rare example. Other Bristol
paper-weights, larger, and door-stops, still larger and heavier, were
tall ovals, two or three or four times the size of a goose’s egg and
rather resembling one in shape; the colour is a verdant or a sage
green, and the inner decoration is flower-petals and leaves, pearled
over as if by dew, and blown with extraordinary skill.
[Illustration: BRISTOL COLOURED PAPER-WEIGHTS (1) GREEN; (2) COLOURED
SPIRALS]
Collectors should beware of forgeries of parti-coloured paper-weights.
They may be known by the coarseness of the flowers inside the glass,
the lack of fine workmanship, and the tawdriness of the colours.
“BRISTOL” AND “NAILSEA”
Nailsea is a small place near Bristol, and nobody can now be sure from
which of the two came any particular bauble--coloured glass-flask,
pestle, bell, witch-ball, tobacco pipe, trumpet, jug, rolling-pin,
bellows-shaped article, walking-stick or rapier, or the (excessively
rare) long glass cylinders containing coloured glass counters for
games. But it is thought that the Bristol wares of this kind were
brighter in colour than the Nailsea product, which, because less
skilful and daring, perhaps, was cooler in tint, less striking in
mixture of colours, and therefore more refined. Probably Bristol
produced the glass which is ornamented by alternate broad stripes of
red and opal-white. Perhaps Nailsea was responsible for glass of a
“greenery-yallery” hue containing whitish spots or splashes: there are
many forgeries of jugs and rolling-pins, in this style, about.
“WROCKWARDINE”
At Wrockwardine, in Salop, the glass works turned out coloured
walking-sticks, ewers, scent-bottles, flasks, twin bottles for oil
and vinegar, and toys; the characteristic being that the glass is
_striped_, in white and one or more colours.
“SUNDERLAND”
The Sunderland glassworks are supposed to have made rolling-pins, and
almost certainly produced the curious polygonal salt cellars (which
some people have thought to be insulators for piano-feet), that reflect
colour and gilding or coloured heads of men or women, from their bases,
talc keeping the ornament there in place.
MISCELLANEA
Witch-balls seem to have been made at Bristol, for I own one of the
Bristol red and opal-white; at Nailsea (in inferior, watery blue); and
at Wrockwardine (greenish-blue striped with pale white). These balls,
it is said, were hung at each door and window, “to keep the witches
out” (see illustration, page 8).
[Illustration: SUNDERLAND SALT CELLARS]
Glass articles splashed with colour _outside_, on the exterior of
the article, exist, but in great rarity; the splashed-on colours are
glass-oxides, but look like oil-paint; the greenish clear glass beneath
the splashing resembles the Nailsea product.
GREEN, PURPLE, AND YELLOW WINE GLASSES
Fine wine glasses, for hock or other white wines, were made in
olive-green, grass-green, purple, and orange; these are collected by
some people for use at table, by some for the collector’s cabinet. The
older ones show the characteristics of dimensions and shape which will
be described later in this book.
VI. OLD DRINKING GLASSES
These are the favourite quarry of the hunter for old glass. I prefer
the more uncommon and out-of-the-way pieces myself, but the old wine
glasses, goblets, cordial glasses, rummers, ale glasses, cider glasses,
and so forth are so interesting, often so beautiful, and sometimes so
quaint, that I do not wonder at the eager collecting of them.
[Illustration: “THISTLE” GLASS, EARLY BALUSTER STEM]
Seeking as I do right through this book to state general rules and
tests which the beginner may apply to all glass he comes across, I now
mention _the general features of old drinking glasses_.
THE LUMPY STEM
In days when men did not rise from the dinner-table quite so easily as
they fell under it, the stem of a drinking glass must be thick, lest it
snap in the convulsive hand, and was more safely held when it was also
lumpy or bulbous--“knopped” and “baluster”-like are other terms for it:
the fingers clung to the knobs.
THE STOUT STEM
Even when the bulbous or lumpy stem ceased to be the rule, a _thick_
stem--three or four times the thickness of modern wine-glass stems--was
the rule, for the reason just given.
[Illustration: EGG-CUP BOWL, KNOPPED STEM (COTTON-WHITE SPIRAL SWELLING
OUT)]
[Illustration: TALL GOBLET, AIR-SPIRAL AND DOME-FOOT]
THE EXTENSIVE FOOT
Similarly, old drinking glasses were always made with very broad “feet”
or bases; usually the foot had a larger circumference than the bowl. A
semi-drunken hand, setting the vessel down on the table, might leave
it rocking for two or three seconds, but the foot was so broad that it
could hardly rock over.
THE RAISED FOOT
Because of the pontil-mark being often a knob, or protuberance, the
foot of the glass must not wholly rest upon the table, but touch it
near the circumference of the foot only, lest the knob at the end of
the stem should prevent the glass standing level, or should scratch the
mahogany.
THE DOMED FOOT
Some of the oldest glasses, in which the pontil-mark is quite a large
protuberance, stand upon feet which, flat upon the table at and near
the edge, rise domelike in the centre. These dome feet are seldom
symmetrical; made by hand, the flat part is usually wider on one side
of the dome than on the other.
[Illustration: DOME-FOOT]
[Illustration: HIGH INSTEP FOOT (TWO VARIETIES)]
THE HIGH INSTEP FOOT
As the pontil-mark became smaller and not so rough, the dome foot gave
place to one which is mainly flat at the base but slightly conical,
rising like a low round hillock, to join the stem: seen in profile,
these somewhat resemble a leg and a foot with a high instep. No
seventeenth-or eighteenth-century stemmed drinking glass except a
“firing” glass has a foot with an uniformly flat section.
THE HEMMED OR FOLDED FOOT
Many old wine glasses are chipped at the edge of the foot; this was due
to carelessness in the scullery sometimes, but often to careless use
by convivial guests. Therefore glass-makers learned the advantage of
folding the edge of the foot under, like a hem in needlework; a rounded
edge, less likely to be chipped, was thus obtained. This “hem” is
nearly always irregular, being turned in more at one part of the base
than another. As a rule, the presence of a folded foot indicates that
the glass was made before 1760.
THE “NORWICH” FOOT
Nobody knows what kind of glasses were made at Norwich or Lynn, but
there is a supposition that horizontal lines, in the bowl or in the
foot, mean “Norwich-made”: the foot is slightly terraced, so to speak.
[Illustration: “NORWICH” FOOT]
THE FIRING GLASS FOOT
There is, I believe, in certain Lodges, a semi-ritual practice of
hammering on the table with the feet of glasses, rhythmically, after a
toast, somewhat in the style of applause called “Kentish fire.” This
seems never to have been done with wine glasses, but old cordial or
spirit glasses exist in considerable numbers which were expressly made
for the purpose, and furnished with flat feet an eighth of an inch
thick or more, so that they should not crack by concussion; in these
old “firing-glasses,” too, the foot is bigger in circumference than the
bowl.
GENERAL RULES
These considerations apply to stemmed glasses for ale, beer, cider,
and cordials also; and to rummers and grog glasses upon stems that are
short but stout. Therefore a _genuine English or Irish drinking glass
of seventeenth-, eighteenth-, or early nineteenth-century make has,
in addition to the tint, ring, quality, pontil-mark, workmanship, and
signs of use, a stout stem and an extensive, raised foot_.
[Illustration: MASONIC FIRING GLASS: NOTE THE THICK FOOT]
About 1830, the six-bottle men being all dead, and even the
three-bottle men becoming rare, the thickness of the stem and the
extensiveness of the foot could safely be reduced; the pontil-mark,
too, was smaller, and the foot of a glass could be made with a lower
instep, so to speak. Therefore a _thin stem and a foot not bigger, or
smaller, than the top of the bowl, with no pontil-mark, or hardly any,
signify that the glass was made during Victoria’s reign or just before
it began_.
“THUMB” GLASSES
“Thumb” glasses are those in which the external surface of the bowl is
pitted with depressions the size of a finger-end, so that the shaking
hand of the bibulous might be the less likely to let the glass drop.
They are usually tall of bowl and short of stem, but rather big of foot.
THE SQUARE FOOT
Old glasses with thick square bases appear to belong to the end of
the eighteenth century, when the “Empire” style was influencing
manufacture: often the base is of inferior workmanship to the bowl.
THE FEET OF TUMBLERS
Even the bases of tumblers were made thick, though they were smaller in
circumference than the top of the tumbler.
VII. THE VARIOUS TYPES OF STEM
Wine glasses and other drinking vessels of glass may best be classified
according to the shape or decoration of the stem.
1. THE BALUSTER STEM
The oldest English drinking glasses are those which have lumpy, knobby,
bulbous stems, of wavy outlines imitating the stems of Tudor and Stuart
silver goblets, and rather resembling the shape of balusters in stair
or terrace balustrades, or the uprights in some old gate-leg tables;
perhaps among the baluster stems we should class those which rather
resemble an inverted obelisk, the broad part just under the bowl and
the point within the foot (see illustration, page 84); this long
remained the favourite shape (and is almost the characteristic shape)
for what are called sweetmeat glasses on stems, and for comports or
glass stands for sweetmeat glasses; it gives a kind of shoulder to the
stem. Sometimes the lower part of such a stem as this is square in
section.
THE COLLAR IN THE BALUSTER STEM
Often the stem does not directly join the bottom of the bowl, but has a
“neck,” with an outstanding ring of glass or “collar” around the neck;
sometimes the collar is double or triple; the neck and collar were
often used later, in other than baluster stems. Sometimes the collar
is near the foot; sometimes there are two collars. Around some stems a
fillet is found; these are very rare.
[Illustration: “WILLIAMITE” GLASS: NOTE THE “COLLAR” ON THE BALUSTER
STEM]
THE OLDER BALUSTERS
_The stouter and lumpier the older the baluster stem_, as a rule; after
the accession of William and Mary, the baluster stems grew more and
more refined and less heavy as the years went on. But baluster-stem
glasses are prized by most collectors according to their bigness and
lumpiness of outline; the older the better, from this point of view.
The massive stems are very handsome; where they touch the bowl the
bowl is very thick, and because the stem and pontil-mark were big, the
foot is often domed; so that the curves of the bowl, the undulations
of the stem, and the domelike or high-instep-like curve of the foot
make a matched and pleasant outline for the whole. _Almost invariably
baluster-stem glasses have folded feet._
COINS IN THE BALUSTER STEMS
Two things may be looked for inside these stems--coins and “tears.”
Sometimes one of the swelling-out parts of the baluster stem was large
enough to enclose a small silver coin; a coin glass is exceedingly
rare and correspondingly valuable, but the date of the coin does not
necessarily indicate the date of the glass.
“TEARS” IN THE STEM
[Illustration: PLAIN DRAWN LARGE ALE GLASS, SHOWING “TEAR” IN STEM]
Many baluster stems enclose a separate blob or bubble of glass, called
a “tear.” It has been thought that this was an accidental feature,
due to imperfect mixing of the metal and the presence of air in the
molten glass. Obviously, that is an unlikely cause, and in the Diary
of Mr. Pepys I have discovered a passage which seems to show how these
“tears” in the stem would begin. Writing little more than twenty years
before 1689, Pepys refers to the “chymical glasses which break all to
dust by breaking off a little end; which is a great mystery to me.”
These were called _lacrymæ Batavicæ_, or “Dutch tears,” and were made
by letting drops of molten glass fall into water; hissing, the glass
became tearlike in shape, a blob with a long slender tail, and hollow.
Probably such as these were the “tears” which appear as ornaments
within the old drinking-glass stems, distinctly visible and separate
from the rest of the glass in the stem, though of the same tinge and
quality of material. The name “tear” is to this extent a misnomer,
that nearly always the “tear” is bigger at the top than the bottom;
whereas a tear proper swells out more the lower it slips on the cheek.
But I own a baluster-stem glass in which the lower part of the “tear”
is the bigger, and in some such glasses the “tear” swells out or in to
match the shape of the stem. Sometimes three or five or more very small
“tears” appear in one of the bulbs.
2. THE DRAWN-OUT OR PLAIN ROUND STEM
“Drawn glasses” were made at twice--the bowl and the stem in one,
the foot added later. To understand better this meaning of the word
“drawn,” imagine a soap-bubble with the extra suds adhering to one
part of it, and suppose that the extra suds could be drawn out to
make a stem; that was the method used in glass. The plain, round stem
resembles a solid cylinder, but it is part of the bowl, in fact it is
a continuation of the bowl. The end of the cylinder, around which the
foot was welded, made a pontil-lump, and therefore the plain stem glass
has either a high instep or a dome foot.
[Illustration: DRAWN BOWL AND PLAIN ROUND STEM]
The plain round stems were made stout because of insobriety, though
that had begun to lessen when this second type of stem came into vogue.
“Tears” are often seen in the plain round stems.
3. THE CORRUGATED ROUND STEM
Stems which are ornamented by outside spirals, or series of small
ridges and grooves alternating, are usually old Dutch; but some of them
are English, though of inferior quality and ring. The quality is so
poor and the make so unsatisfactory that probably they were a “cheap
and nasty” contemporary imitation and substitute for glasses adorned
with the air spiral, the type which succeed the plain round stem. It is
hardly likely that the corrugated stem preceded the air-spiral stem;
or, if at all, for more than a few years. With these corrugated stems
one expects to find, almost without exception, that the bowl of the
glass is shaped like an inverted, incurving, waisted bell.
[Illustration: (1) CORRUGATED STEM AND (2) HOP AND BARLEY GLASSES, THE
LATTER SHOWING THE “SILVER SPIRAL”]
4. THE AIR-SPIRAL STEM
At any rate, out of the “tears” in the baluster and plain round stems
was developed the idea of ornamenting stems by internal spirals or
twists, and whether these should be number four or number three in the
chronological order is not very important. By twisting while drawing
out the stem from the surplus metal of the bowl (which contained
several small “tears”) the graceful and beautiful effect of the air
spiral _inside the stem_ was produced. Sometimes the spiral starts
within the bowl; sometimes it winds round the base of the bowl; but
always the ornamentation becomes a trellis-work or network when it
fills up the whole stem; when it does not fill up the whole stem, it
meanders down it medially, in one substantial spiral, like a corkscrew
or a rope, or in two that interlace: and in the finest examples the
finger can feel no ridging of the surface at all, though a slight
ridging is palpable in many glasses. Now all this meant splendid
workmanship--English aptitude at handicraft, the best of its kind in
the world.
[Illustration: DRAWN BOWL AND AIR-SPIRAL STEM, BEGINNING BELOW THE BOWL]
Sometimes the spiral is so very brilliant that it seems as if it
were made of quicksilver, and collectors call it “silver spiral” or
“brilliant air-twist”; but this is probably an effect of light. In
all cases the air spiral is glass colour, the tint of the rest of
the glass; red, cotton-white, and blue spirals belong to the type
of stem to be mentioned next. Sometimes, it is true, a white thread
is seen running down the centre of the stem, within the network
of air spirals; but oftener when this central thread occurs, it is
“air-colour” itself.
Air spirals are often seen in stems of knobby or baluster form;
sometimes air-spiral stems have “necks.” This probably means that long
rods of glass containing air spirals were made, with the baluster
shape recurring at regular intervals of suitable length, so that the
rod could be cut up into lengths and each length welded on to the
bowl and the foot of a glass. These are the air-spiral glasses most
sought after. Sometimes the stem of a drawn glass was welded to a foot
of which a bulb was the upper part, this bulb sometimes containing
beadlike “tears,” but these are very rare: sometimes the upper part of
the stem is plain, and the lower part, beginning with a knob, is air
spiral, or _vice versa_. Sometimes old air-spiral glasses with small
feet are found; this was due to a practice of grinding away the edge,
when the feet had become chipped by much use, and re-polishing the feet
of these much-valued glasses; the folded foot for these glasses was not
the rule.
Tall, slender-bowled air-spiral glasses for champagne are sometimes
found, in shape resembling the glasses called _flûtes_; I own one of
this sort not less than 9½ inches high. Rarer still are spiral-stemmed
glasses for ale; I own one 11 inches high (see illustration, page
60). The former I gave 7s. 6d. for, the latter 10s., a tithe of their
West-End prices. But these are very exceptional glasses.
Air-spiral stems are found in cordial and spirit glasses, firing
glasses, and goblets with short stems.
5. THE COTTON-WHITE SPIRAL STEM
[Illustration: TALL CHAMPAGNE GLASSES: (1) TAPE COTTON-WHITE, AND (2)
AIR-SPIRAL STEMS]
During the latter half of the eighteenth century the air-spiral glasses
continued to be made, but the opaque or cotton-white spiral stems came
into fashion and general use. These were not “drawn” stems; they could
not be, because the white glass was not inherent in the metal. The
stem was made by lining a long cylindrical mould with wirelike “canes”
of cotton-white and other glass alternately. Then melted plain glass
was poured into the cylinder. The canes adhered to the warm metal, and
when the whole was reheated, it could be twisted into spiral designs.
Then the parti-coloured rod thus made was cut into stem-lengths. By
this means a great variety of designs in the spirals could be produced,
and indeed, the countless differences in English-made cotton-white
spirals, hardly any two alike, are one of the features of a collection.
Sometimes the design spreads like the air-twist; sometimes it circles
around a central, wavy tube; sometimes the cotton-white is tapelike, in
a “Greek key” pattern; sometimes an outer spiral runs around the inner
corkscrew; but always the effect is pleasing, and rather striking,
though perhaps not quite in the reticent good taste of the air-spiral
stems.
[Illustration: STRAIGHT-SIDED, COTTON-WHITE GREEK KEY PATTERN]
Dome feet or folded feet are hardly ever found under cotton-white
or other coloured spiral stems; any example of that should at once
be acquired; but the pontil-mark is always found--_if the glass be
old_. The white in English-made glasses is generally a pure, vivid,
cotton-white; in Dutch glasses it is usually a dull greyish hue. (This
is why I use the term “cotton-white” as descriptive of these English
stems.)
6. COLOURED SPIRAL STEMS
The next step, to coloured or “mixed” spirals, was obvious, but not
very often taken at English glassworks: most of the red and white
spiral stems now seen came from Holland or Liège. However, at Bristol
red and white, and blue and white, spiral stems were made; they are
known by the ruby red and the peculiar Bristol blue. Yellow and white,
purple and white, and green and white spirals are known; rare indeed is
a three-colour spiral. Coloured twist stems were only made in England
about the end of the eighteenth century. An almost constant feature of
tri-coloured stems made in Holland or at Liège is a wavy central tube
of white, with coloured spirals around it, swelling or contracting to
suit the usually bulbous shape of the stem.
7. CUT PLAIN-GLASS STEMS
These seem to have been in fashion during the period 1775-1825.
Usually the stems are hexagonal, and the cutting had, of course, to be
continued, in a shallow way, on the lower part of the bowl. “Thistle”
glasses are those in which the cutting of the stem and bowl to some
extent suggests the thistle in shape and appearance. The stems were
often knopped--this is a feature of Waterford glass cut stems--but
towards the end of the period mentioned above the stems became
cylindrical except for the cutting, and the cutting did not so much
produce facets as long grooves.
The dates just given would suggest that the dome foot and the folded
foot are not to be looked for under cut stems, but they are met with,
the dome foot having been kept in use for ornament’s sake, probably.
Nor is the pontil-mark present, if the cutter removed it; except that
sometimes he left just the faintest trace of it, which the finger can
detect.
VIII. THE VARIOUS SHAPES OF BOWL
Stemmed drinking vessels, whether for wine or ale, for rum or cordials,
cider or drams, can be classified according to shape of bowl; this is
important for descriptive purposes, and to some extent for dating. The
following names of shapes do not apply to tumblers, mugs, or tankards,
of course.
[Illustration: (1) DRAWN]
[Illustration: (2) BELL]
_There are ten general shapes of bowl_:
1. _Drawn_, found with the plain round stem and the air-spiral stem.
2. _Bell_, found with the baluster stem, the necked and collared stem,
the air-spiral stem, the cotton-white spiral stem, with coin glasses,
and with rose glasses.
3. _Waisted bell_, found with the corrugated stem and the plain stem.
4. _Straight-sided_, found with each class of stem.
[Illustration: (3) WAISTED BELL]
[Illustration: (4) STRAIGHT-SIDED]
5. _Rectangular_, a variety of the straight-sided, found with the plain
round stem and the air-spiral stem.
[Illustration: (5) RECTANGULAR]
[Illustration: (6) EGG-CUP-SHAPED]
6. _Egg-cup-shaped_, or ovoid, found with the cotton-white spiral stem,
the air-spiral stem, and the cut stem.
7. _Ogee_ (named after a term in architecture, signifying a curve,
somewhat like the letter S), found mostly with the cotton-white
spiral stem and the coloured spiral stem. These are believed to be of
Bristol make as a rule, as many of them have the Bristol characteristic
of perpendicular or spiral flutings in the lower half of the bowl,
produced by pressure (a kind of moulding). The ogee bowl is also found
with the cut stem, the plain round stem, and moulded stems.
[Illustration: (7) OGEE (TWO VARIETIES)]
[Illustration: (8) LIPPED OGEE]
[Illustration: (9) DOUBLE OGEE]
[Illustration: (10) WAISTED]
8. _Lipped ogee_, found with the coloured spiral stem, the cotton-white
stem, and moulded stems mainly.
9. _Double ogee_, found with the air-spiral stem, and the cotton-white
stem; some of the oldest have knops and the folded foot.
10. _Waisted_, found with the air-spiral stem and the mixed spiral stem.
SMALL LUMP OR BEAD AT BOTTOM OF BOWL
[Illustration: “ROSE” GLASS, BELL BOWL, AIR-SPIRAL BEGINNING IN THE
BASE OF THE BOWL]
In many of the older wine glasses the finger can feel, inside the bowl,
just above the top of the stem, a small conical projection, like that
of half a bead. But this is not invariable, or an essential proof of
genuineness.
IX. OTHER STEMMED DRINKING GLASSES
Wine glasses do not by any means exhaust the list of collectable
glasses on stems; there are many desirable stemmed glasses once used
for ale, cider, perry, or spirits, to be acquired.
1. ALE AND BEER GLASSES
[Illustration: CANDLESTICK BETWEEN TALL BEER GLASSES]
Many glasses, drawn, bell, or waisted-bell shape in bowl and baluster,
plain round, air spiral, cotton-white spiral, or cut in stem, exist,
which appear to have been used for the very strong ale then brewed;
often these are engraved with representations of hops and barley.
Large vessels, perhaps used for “small beer,” exist, from 9 to 16
inches tall, and proportionately capacious: the biggest of the kind
I ever saw was engraved with Jacobite emblems. The smaller examples
of this class may have been used daily; the larger may have been kept
for occasional use as loving-cups, or were never used at all, perhaps,
being merely _tours de force_ of the glass-maker, and kept as ornaments
to a sideboard. The very large ones are drawn glasses, with plain round
stems, as a rule; the nine-or ten-inch tall glasses of this kind are
baluster or plain round in stem. I bought one of these (see page 48)
for £2 5s. not long ago; its West-End price now might be £10, for it is
“Waterford.”
2. CIDER GLASSES
No doubt some of the glasses mentioned just above were used at times
for strong cider; perhaps large goblets were used for draught perry
or cider at times. But special cider glasses exist, engraved with
representations of apples and apple-tree leaves, or apple-trees, and
these, from 6 to 7 inches tall, have ogee or rectangular bowls as a
rule, and usually cotton-white spiral stems.
3. CHAMPAGNE OR MUM GLASSES
There are two types of old champagne or mum glasses, each rare: one
type has a wide-lipped bell or double-ogee bowl, upon a baluster stem,
and much resembles some of the bigger sweetmeat glasses; the other type
is 7 to 9 inches high, ogee bowl, and cotton-white stem.
4. RUMMERS AND MUGS
There were three shapes of rummers used, one goblet shape, one on a
tall stem, and one on a stem which is also a base: sometimes the base
of an old rummer is square. The first of these three shapes has a
baluster stem, the second a plain round, spiral, or cut stem.
Fine mugs, with handles, imitating contemporary old silverware, are
found; the mugs show something of a stem (see illustration, page 7).
Often they are engraved with the initials of their first owner, and
sometimes are dated also. Fine double-handled mugs, like loving-cups,
exist.
[Illustration: (1) JOEY, (2) THISTLE FUDDLING, (3) BRISTOL COACHING,
AND (4) JOEY GLASSES]
5. SPIRIT GLASSES AND CORDIAL GLASSES
These are small in bowl and short in stem, the bowl is often
straight-sided, and the stem is usually drawn, and often cut. But there
are many with drawn bowls and plain stems. A “thistle” glass of this
kind is specially valued. Often the bowl is engraved. Cordial glasses
may have long stems.
6. COACHING GLASSES AND FUDDLING GLASSES
These are glasses which have no feet: they were used at one draught of
the liquor in them. I bought a Bristol opal glass of the kind for 6d.,
but these are excessively rare. Almost as rare are the plain glasses,
with cut stems, used in coaching days. When the stage coach paused at
an inn, a waiter came out with a tray of footless glasses, each resting
on its bowl; the traveller took one up, inverted it into the proper
position, held it out to the bottle or decanter in the waiter’s hand,
drank, and set the glass down upon its bowl again. A fuddling glass was
a variety of coaching glass used indoors, for a rapid dram; a “thistle”
glass of this kind was favoured in Scotland.
[Illustration: (1) DRAM, (2) TOASTMASTER, (3) OAKLEAF, AND (4) HOGARTH
GLASSES]
7. TOASTMASTER GLASSES
These are less capacious dram glasses than they seem; the lower part
of the bowl was deceptively made very thick, so that the toastmaster
at a banquet need not drink so much as would otherwise have been
necessary, when announcing and sharing in every one of the score or two
of the toasts and “sentiments” which were honoured at every convivial
board. A relic of the “sentiment” habit was preserved by Dickens in the
language of Mr. Dick Swiveller: “May the wing of friendship never moult
a feather” was a “sentiment” in its day.
8. “HOGARTH” GLASSES
Certain short, short-stemmed, or almost stemless glasses, with
“Norwich” feet often, and with drawn or waisted-bell bowls wide at the
mouth, are known as “Hogarth” glasses, because they were often shown in
Hogarth’s pictures of contemporary social life.
9. TAVERN AND KITCHEN GLASSES
Old glasses are often found which in shape and purpose correspond with
those described in this chapter and chapters vi, vii, and viii, but
were obviously inferior in finish of make when new. These may be taken
to be glasses made cheaply for tavern and kitchen use; though not so
attractive as the better qualities, they should not be neglected by the
collector.
10. YARD OF ALE GLASSES
Evelyn tells in his diary that in 1683 the health of James II was drunk
at Bromley “in a flint glass of a yard long.” Imitations of these
are made, but the real old ones are excessively rare. In shape they
rather resemble a coaching-horn, the mouthpiece being the foot, or the
mouthpiece being replaced by a bulb. They were used at merry-makings,
as proof of bibulous skill in emptying a glass a yard long. There are
also half-yard glasses.
11. “THIMBLEFUL” GLASSES
These have a very small straight-sided or ogee bowl, upon a plain
round, or spiral stem and big foot. They are very rare.
X. JACOBITE, WILLIAMITE, AND HANOVERIAN GLASSES
These are the aristocracy among the wine glasses, goblets, and spirit
glasses. They are rare, difficult to find, and costly to buy, but not
impossible to come upon by lucky hazard.
THE ROSE GLASSES
[Illustration: JACOBITE GLASS SHOWING THE STUART ROSE: ALSO THE
“CENTRAL TUBE” IN THE STEM]
The dearest aim of every collector of old wine glasses is to come upon
a Jacobite glass. The more sanguine and less strict kind of collector
declares himself the owner of a Jacobite example if he possesses a
glass engraved with a six-petalled heraldic Stuart rose (one petal for
each King or Queen of Stuart blood who actually reigned in England, he
says), a large bud (representing the Old Pretender, he explains), a
smaller bud (for the Young Pretender), and a bird or (see illustration,
page 20) butterfly (crossing the narrow seas, he explains, to bring the
Stuarts back).
[Illustration: JACOBITE GLASS, SHOWING PORTRAIT OF THE YOUNG PRETENDER]
[Illustration: JACOBITE GLASS, SHOWING THE THISTLE]
A stricter, less easily satisfied collector points out that those were
“the ordinary rose glasses,” used at all fashionable dinner-tables
in the eighteenth century (see illustration, page 59). The reply to
that is that the six-petalled rose and one of the buds, at least, are
heraldic, not naturally represented; that the heraldic, six-petalled
white rose was the Stuart rose; and that, at any rate, the “ordinary
rose glasses” were sometimes used by Jacobites, particularly in general
assemblies, because of their covert meaning, when it would have been
unsafe to use the treasonable Jacobite glasses proper. A slight
addition to the rose glass makes it truly Jacobite; thus I own a fine
goblet which is made Jacobite by a monk’s-hood flower being added--a
reference to General Monk. An “ordinary rose glass”--not so ordinary
after all, and difficult to procure now, as well as dear to buy--which
has a Stuart emblem engraved _under_ the foot of it is allowed to pass
muster by the stricter collector, but what he aims at or boasts of if
he possesses one is a “Jacobite glass proper.”
THE “JACOBITE”
Now a “Jacobite glass proper” is engraved with a portrait of the Old
Pretender, or of his son “Bonnie Prince Charlie”; or with the rose,
two buds, a butterfly or a bird, and also a Jacobite motto or emblem,
or both; or with the cypher of the Old Pretender and the words of a
loyalist song. Upon a firing glass (the rarest of the Jacobite variety)
may be seen the touching emblem of a thunder-smitten tree putting forth
new branches, and the motto _Revirescit_ (It becomes green again).
Upon a wine glass may be seen the word “Fiat” with a star (perhaps
standing for _fiat lux_, “Let there be light,” or perhaps for “Let it
be done”--the second Restoration of the Stuarts). Or the motto may be
_Redeat_ (let him return), or, very rare, _Redi_; or _Radiat_ (perhaps
a misspelling of _Redeat_, or possibly meant for “let him shine”). If
an oak-leaf (as well as the other features) appear on the glass, it was
probably used in England; if a thistle, probably in Scotland.
[Illustration: JACOBITE “FIRING” GLASS, SHOWING THE OAKLEAF AND THE
WORD “FIAT”]
There still are a few Jacobite glasses lying unrecognised no doubt;
two were found in a London broker’s shop a few years ago, and bought
for 5s.; in 1914 a Bristol schoolmaster learned accidentally that two
glasses which had stood on a shelf on a sideboard in the family for
forty years were _Fiat_ glasses, and a valuer going to a house in
Sussex for other purposes, discovered a Prince Charlie portrait glass
(worth a hundred guineas now) still passing _incognito_--there had been
“the pair of it,” but that had been “smashed to bits,” the servants
said.
[Illustration: JACOBITE “FIRING” GLASS, SHOWING THE STAR AND THE
ROSEBUD]
The rarest form of Jacobite glasses is the short toasting or firing
glass, for strong waters, of “Hogarth” shape. I possess one of these;
it has a “Norwich” foot; the thickness of the base of the bowl, and
the “tear” in that and the short bulbous stem, seem to date it at
about 1725, so that it will be an “Old Pretender” glass. It is very
beautifully engraved with the six-petalled rose, the two buds, the word
“Fiat,” the rising star and the (Boscobel) oak-leaf. It had been kept
in an armoury, belonging to a collector who did not collect old glass.
[Illustration: JACOBITE FIRING-GLASS: NOTE THE TERRACED OR “NORWICH”
FOOT AND THE “TEAR” IN THE BALUSTER STEM: ALSO THE CENTRE OF THE ROSE,
BRIGHT AMIDST THE GROUND-GLASS PETALS]
No wonder people hunt for Jacobite glasses. They were the romantic,
loyal, treasonable vessels which were emptied to the toast of “his
Majesty over the water,” in clandestine and dangerous gatherings of
fair women and conspiring men. Then the great punch-bowl was filled
with water, to represent the narrow seas, and the red wine sparkled in
the glasses held out above it; as often at loyal Georgian assemblies a
Jacobite would be seen to hold his wine glass above a tumbler of water,
if called on to drink to “the King”:
_Then all leapt up and joined their hands
With hearty clasp and greeting,
The brimming cups, outstretched by all,
Over the wide bowl meeting:
“A health!” they cried, “to witching eyes
Of sweetheart, wife, or daughter,
But never forget the white, white rose,
That blooms for us over the water!”_
Flip these old glasses with the finger-nail, and they ring like a
tuning-fork; draw thumb and finger upwards to the edge of the bowl, and
you hear a clear faint resonance, sad as the wailings after Culloden,
when final defeat had come.
THE “WILLIAMITE”
I bought two fine, perfect, baluster-stemmed Williamite glasses for
a guinea once; they show William of Orange on horseback, and are
inscribed with “The Glorious Memory of King William, No Surrender,
Boyne, 1st. Iuly 1690”; and the initials “T.C” and “S.C”; on some such
glasses two of the initials are “S.T.” (see illustration, page 47).
The glass is a yellowish-white where it is thick, and if not made at
Belfast, may have been made in Cork; but the engraving would be done
in Ulster. Some such glasses are rather recent; no doubt the making of
Williamite glasses continued longer than the making of Jacobite glasses
did, because of the continued existence of Orange Lodges. Some of these
glasses are inscribed “The Immortal Memory” only, or “To the glorious
memory of King William” only. Williamite firing glasses, of “Hogarth”
shape, are also found.
THE “HANOVERIAN”
When the House of Hanover came to the throne of the United Kingdom,
loyal drinking glasses were made accordingly. “God save King George”
and “Liberty” are the usual inscriptions on them; sometimes the
heraldic white horse of Hanover was engraved on the bowl, or the three
crosses of the Union Jack inside a garter and the rays of the sun.
Hanoverian glasses are rarer than Jacobite or Williamite, but Jacobite
glasses are the most valued and costly.
XI. TUMBLERS, TANKARDS, “JOEYS,” AND “BOOT” GLASSES
I class these together because they are stemless. Pewter and silver
tankards were imitated in glass, and these differ from mugs in being
straight-sided and quite stemless; often they were engraved with
initials and dates.
Old tumblers are not found so numerously as old wine glasses are;
they are usually large, are often cut, and are sometimes engraved.
Some tumblers are barrel-shaped, like some rummers, but most tumblers
are “straight-sided” or “rectangular.” Some tumblers are engraved
with portraits (as of Admiral Keppel) or with inscriptions (as of
“Wellington for ever”). I own two which celebrate the “Independence of
Durham and Richd. Wharton its defender,” probably made at Sunderland in
1802, to commemorate a Parliamentary Election in which the freedom of
the citizens of Durham from rule by the bishop’s bailiff was involved.
Masonic tumblers are rare; so are Bristol opal-glass tumblers, yet I
own one which cost me 1s.
“Joeys” are dram glasses, shaped like tumblers, or like fuddling
glasses with no foot or stem (see illustration, page 62). Mr. Joseph
Hume, M.P., had caused fourpenny bits to be coined; fourpenny bits
were accordingly called “joeys”; even to-day people call for a “joey”
of brandy. When a tax was put on gin, less of the liquor could then
be sold for fourpence; so that the glass was made thicker, and the
contents accordingly less. For a similar reason to-day there are in
public-houses glasses called “Lloyd Georges,” I am told. The two
“joeys” I own are of grass-green hue; one is inscribed with “4d.”
[Illustration: SMALL BOOT GLASSES]
“Boot” glasses are small blown vessels in the shape of riding-boots,
probably used for spirits in the parting dram, otherwise called the
stirrup-cup. There seems little foundation for the suggestion that
these were emblems of Lord Bute, in the days of George III; for as Mr.
Hartshorne, the founder of glass-collecting, discovered, a jack-boot
glass is preserved in the museum of Liège and another in a Dutch
museum, and these are older and more elaborate than the English “boot”
glasses. I own two of those which Mr. Hartshorne collected, and on
which he based the “Bute” suggestion, but small “boot” glasses are
exceedingly rare. A big one, cut, and 12 inches high, was once offered
me; I think it came from Liège. Large boot glasses striped with white
are seen sometimes; “boot” glasses can hardly have been peculiar to
Great Britain. Perhaps they were used by hunting men as an emblem of
their sport.
XII. BOTTLES, DECANTERS, AND JUGS
BOTTLES
The Trapnell collection contained an early seventeenth-century bottle,
with a seal of a king’s head; another dated Henry Galshell, 1700;
another inscribed T. Bellamy, 1773. I own one bearing “C. Yoxall, 1778”
in raised letters on a raised lozenge. These are all of dark, thick
glass, and are short-necked and tun-bellied. A little later, in 1786,
for instance, the shape became like that of a beer bottle to-day, but
larger.
The rectangular, shouldered spirit bottles, with separately made short
necks, and engraved or gilded, are usually Dutch, and were perhaps
enclosed in cases, something like “tantalus” bottles. There are tall,
embossed spirit bottles, often of coloured glass, with cut-glass
stoppers. There are cut-glass English bottles, decanter-shaped but
stopperless, a cork being used. Holster bottles were a kind of flask
carried in the saddle holster. Bottles for oil and vinegar and spices
resembled cruet bottles as a rule. Scent bottles, large, in plain
glass, are found; small scent bottles, cut or coloured, or mounted with
silver or pinchbeck stoppers, exist in great numbers; I own a Bristol
scent bottle which is cut like a shell cameo, through two layers of
coloured glass, one pink, one opal, down to the basal layer of plain
glass; it cost me 6s. 6d.
DECANTERS
During most of the eighteenth century wine came to table in bottles;
“decanting” began to be the fashion about 1780, perhaps. The decanters
of that date have sloping shoulders as a rule; some in shape resemble
a drawn glass with short stem reversed; a little later decanters
became more globular and high-shouldered, with shorter necks. Engraved
festoons on a decanter, as indeed upon a wine glass, usually indicate
the “Empire” period by their decoration--the end of the eighteenth
century, if not the beginning of the next. It must be said, however,
that some “Jacobite” decanters exist with long necks and globular
bodies; so difficult is it to find a rule without an exception in old
glass. These Jacobite decanters have pointed stoppers, too; whereas
oval rounded stoppers seem generally to have been the early form.
JUGS
Ale jugs, wine jugs, and water jugs in plain, coloured, or cut glass
are plentiful. The most desirable are Waterford made, known by
the tint, the weight, and the cutting. Cork-made jugs, resembling
Waterford-made in cutting, but yellowish in tint, are found. Bristol
coloured jugs, Wrockwardine striped and Nailsea splashed glass jugs
exist; these, like many other old plain glass jugs, are blown and not
cut. Jugs with very large necks and lips, either blown or cut, are
fairly early examples. Sometimes a plain glass jug will have a raised
festoon of plain or coloured glass about its neck.
Milk and cream jugs in Bristol blue, opal, or ruby glass are well
known; cut milk-jugs exist in fair number.
XIII. BOWLS, LIFTERS, SUGAR-CRUSHERS, SPOONS, ETC.
Large cut-glass bowls, and plain bowls, exist, perhaps too small for
punch (except the Bristol painted opal-glass ones), but big enough for
fruit or salads. Often these stand on feet and stems. Finger bowls
of plain blown and of cut glass are found. Coloured glass bowls, of
Bristol blue, green, violet, or red, are desirable acquisitions. The
earliest form of finger bowl was not a finger glass so much as a wine
cooler or glass rinser; these have two projecting lips or ears opposite
each other, to support the glass as it lay in the water rinsing or
cooling.
[Illustration: COLLARLESS, CUT, AND COLLARED “LIFTERS”: THE MIDDLE
COLLAR REPRESENTS A “FILLET”]
The _toddy lifter_, _punch lifter_, or _grog lifter_ is an interesting
glass article; I own seven, though examples are quite rare. There are
several shapes. When the lower part is a high-shouldered decanter shape
it is said to be a punch lifter, and English; when the lower part is
round and shoulderless, like a club, it is Scottish and a toddy lifter.
In most cases there is a fillet or collar of glass round the neck, and
these are called ring-necked; the absence of the ring is rare. The
bowl is of the size required for an ordinary glassful, for the lifters
were used to transfer punch, toddy, or grog from the punch-bowl to the
glass. The earlier way of doing this was by a silver or wooden ladle,
but about the year 1800 the glass lifter (which is really a pipette or
siphon) came into use. When the base of the lifter sank into the punch,
the punch rose into the bowl of it by a hole in the bottom of it; the
thumb then closed the hole at the top of the neck, thus creating a
vacuum. Then the lifter could be carried over the table to the glass,
and when the thumb was taken away the punch ran down into the glass.
Glass sugar crushers, plain, cut, or ridged with spirals, are found,
with a pestle-like end to them. Glass spoons are rare. Glass knives
are found, but most of them are doubtful. Pestles of Nailsea glass are
seen, perhaps once used by ladies in their still-rooms; maybe glass
mortars to match them may turn up.
Knife rests for the table are found, some plain moulded, some cut, some
even with spirals inside them.
XIV. CANDLESTICKS, LUSTRES, AND LAMPS
Lustres and girandoles are often collected; glass standard lamps
seldom, at present; glass candlesticks are much hunted for.
1. CANDLESTICKS
The most beautiful of glass candlesticks are those made and cut at
Waterford, which stand about 12 inches high; £10 is a low price for
a pair. Bristol cut-glass candlesticks are nearly as fine; Bristol
opal-glass candlesticks, plain or painted in the Battersea enamel
style, are exceedingly rare. Candlesticks with air-spiral and
cotton-white stems are occasionally met with. Ordinary moulded-glass
candlesticks, of the early nineteenth century, are pretty numerous:
fine moulded candlesticks are of earlier date.
[Illustration: FINE MOULDED CANDLESTICKS; SEE ALSO ILLUSTRATION, PAGE
60]
Glass candlesticks of Georgian date follow much the same order as
the contemporary wine glasses, in the feet, pontil-marks, and stems.
The earliest have baluster stems about 9 inches high, and round feet
between 6 and 7 inches in diameter; the feet are domed or high instep,
and the pontil-mark is a lump. The dome foot occurs with the air-spiral
stems, later, and even with the cut stems, later still; in these last,
as in the moulded and in the cut and engraved examples, the pontil-mark
does not show. Fine candlesticks ornamented by purfling were made (see
illustration, page 60). Glass taper stands are found.
2. LUSTRES
The degenerate form of lustre that was found on every parlour
mantelpiece about the year 1860 is the best-known form, and many of
these coloured glass objects, belling out at the top and bottom, with
hanging prisms fantastically cut, are still extant; but as yet they are
little collected. The name “lustres,” however, may be used to include
the standing girandoles and the hanging chandeliers adorned with
festoons of diamond-like cut prisms, and these are much sought after;
many collectors acquire loose prisms, long or diamond-shaped, whenever
they can, and have them re-strung, to be added to new glass chandeliers.
The earliest form of the girandole, or standing lustre, had a glass
standard and glass arms; the top of the standard was a candlestick
nozzle; the glass standard and arms and the dependent prisms reflected
the candlelight brilliantly. Two of these were in use at Mount Vernon
when George Washington was President of the United States; in the
_Boston News Letter_ for 1719, “Fine Glass Lamps and Lanthorns” were
advertised. Later, French influence brought in the ormolu and brass
standards, some two feet high with ormolu arms and glass hangers.
A complete set of girandoles, for a mantelpiece or console-stand,
consisted of three, with ormolu bases (sometimes representing a human
figure), standards, and arms; the central one triply or quintuply a
candlestick, the side ones singly so.
In the fine tall lustres made in pairs at Cork about 1820 all was
glass, except the metal clips inserted in the nozzles to hold the
candles better. Until lustres lost their meaning and became mere mantel
ornaments the candlestick part of them was a usual feature.
3. LAMPS
Glass standard lamps, some with round bases, some with square bases,
the stems cut or balustered, may be found; in some cases the standard
is short and supports a blown-glass lampshade; in other cases a
blown-glass bulb is part of the tall standard.
A rare and interesting form of lamp, one of the oldest, has a bulb
with an opening in the top, the edges of the opening rounded off, and
a corrugated stand; these are small, and were used for nightlights. I
own three, one of them with a handle, and a dish beneath it, evidently
used for carrying the light from room to room (see illustration, page
27); such as these would, perhaps, be the old “mortars,” or night-light
holders, for a cake of wax and a wick.
XV. COMPORTS, SWEETMEAT, JELLY AND CUSTARD GLASSES
COMPORTS
[Illustration: COMPORT, WITH CAPTAIN GLASS AND SWEETMEAT GLASS; ALL
THREE SHOWING THE “INVERTED OBELISK” STEM]
A comport is a large glass stand upon which (as the name signifies)
other things may be carried together. A comport consists of a large
or largish glass disc, flat, with a rim to it, upheld upon a thick
stem--most often a shouldered stem, in shape resembling an inverted
obelisk, rising from a domed and folded foot. An old comport is a rare
possession; a modern glass cake-stand, such as confectioners use, is
a near approach to it in shape. The use of a comport appears to have
been to stand on a dining-table, bearing a number of glasses filled
with jelly or sweetmeats.
SWEETMEAT GLASSES
Old sweetmeat glasses were used at table much as bon-bon dishes are
now, to pass round at the dessert course; or to hand to ladies at other
than mealtimes, during a call. Sweetmeat glasses proper resemble wine
glasses, but have wide bowls, thick-lipped, unsuitable for drinking
from: the shape of the stem resembled that of the stem of the comport.
Often these glasses were engraved.
[Illustration: SWEETMEAT GLASSES: (1) MOULDED; (2) ENGRAVED (3)
WATERFORD CUT]
“CAPTAIN” OR “MASTER” GLASSES
In the centre of the comport, surrounded by sweetmeat glasses, a
bigger, taller “captain” or “master” glass stood; its shape resembled
that of the smaller glasses, and it probably held a store from which
these could be replenished. “Captain” glasses are much sought for; the
most valuable are Waterford cut, the West-End price for one being now
£8.
[Illustration: JELLY GLASSES. NOTE THE MOULDED ORNAMENT]
The bowls are usually varieties of the double ogee; the moulded stem is
usually high-shouldered, inverted obelisk in shape, but air-spiral and
cotton-white spiral stems are found (see illustration, page 1). A cut
stem is usually knopped, but may be plain round, except for the cutting.
JELLY GLASSES
Jelly glasses are small, low, moulded or pressed, almost stemless,
on domed or high instep feet; sometimes the bowls are plain blown or
moulded, sometimes cut, sometimes hexagonal.
CUSTARD GLASSES
The most desirable custard glasses have handles. Some of them have
square bases. Some of them resemble smallish wine glasses with
corrugated stems. Most of them are decorated by pressed or incised
lines.
[Illustration: (1) HANDLED, AND (2) SQUARED-BASED CUSTARD GLASSES]
XVI. SALT CELLARS, PEPPER BOXES, SUGAR BASINS, ETC.
The “Sunderland” salt cellars have already been mentioned (see page
39); moulded or cut-glass salt cellars are much less rare. The oldest
of these seem to be those with oval bowls, in the Queen Anne silver
style, with diamond-shape bases on short stems, everywhere cut. Some
salt cellars have turned-over tops, much broader than the rest of the
vessel; there are Bristol striped salt cellars of this shape. In some
cut salt cellars the lines run horizontally. Victorian salt cellars
were very heavy and rather plain.
Pepper boxes of glass are round, or octagonal, plain or cut, with or
without a foot; holes are pierced in the top, there is a glass stopper
at the bottom; sometimes the base is square and the pierced top is of
silver. In some cases the vessel was used for castor-sugar.
Sugar-basins exist in numbers, and in plain, cut, opal, and coloured
glass, notably in the Bristol blue. There are covered sugar basins;
when these are large and cut they are known as sugar bowls. A special
type is the _caddy sugar-basin_ (see page 27); this was usually of
straight-sided form, blown, moulded, or cut, or both moulded and cut;
it stood in the central receptacle of a tea-caddy, within the round
hole between the two rectangular boxes which held green tea and black
tea respectively. These basins are much more seldom met with than the
caddies are. Often they are very heavy, and nearly always they are very
ornamental. Bristol opal-glass sugar and slop basins are met with; in
this glass complete tea-sets were made, including tea poys or glass
tea-caddies. In the Willett collection was “a Bristol glass teapot and
cover, with flowers in colours.” A glass teapot is rarely found.
XVII. MIRRORS, GLASS PICTURES, GLASS KNOBS
Mirrors more properly come within the category of furniture, but they
largely consist of glass, of course, so that some notice of them is
needed here.
In 1688 the art of casting large plates of glass began to be carried
on in France. In 1663 the art had been patented in England, but for
smaller sizes. One French mirror, now in the Louvre at Paris, was
valued at £6000 in 1791. Glass used to be a costly product; the chief
reason why old prints are usually found trimmed of their margins was
that glass to frame with them was so dear.
Old _mirrors_ with bevelled edges have the bevel flattish, nearly in
the plane of the glass; the bevel follows the shape of the frame,
but is irregular at its inner outlines, because the grinding of the
bevel was done by hand. Modern bevels, done by machinery, are almost
mathematically exact, and make an acuter angle with the frame than the
old bevels do. Also the silvering at the back of old mirrors differs
from the method of silvering now used; the difference is much more
easy to recognize by the eye than to describe, but there is a kind of
granulation in the older backing.
_Glass pictures_ are of two kinds; one in which the painting, in
oil-colours, was done upon the glass itself, usually at the back of
it; and another in which the paint was laid on coarsely behind a print
which, rubbed very thin at the back of the paper, had been affixed to
the back of the glass. This second kind is the more numerously met
with; also it is the most counterfeited. Age may be known, however,
by the curving, bubbly surface of the glass. A third kind, consisting
of a mosaic of bits of glass, so laid together in cement as to form a
picture is rare, even in modern examples.
Glass _knobs_ to handsome sideboards were used in the first quarter of
the nineteenth century, and have continually been used in Yorkshire,
for dressers, since then; old glass knobs are usually moulded, but some
are cut, though the round, uncut shape was the most convenient for
handling. Glass door-knobs are found.
XVIII. OLD PASTE, GLASS BEADS, AND TAWS
PASTE
All artificial “stones” used in jewellery are glass--glass variously
shaped, cut, and coloured--but “_old paste_” is glass not coloured;
though it may be backed with coloured foil, which shows a tint through
the glass. Old-paste collecting is, therefore, a branch of old-glass
collecting, and cannot be ignored in this book.
White paste is usually a substitute for diamonds; the carefully made
and cut old paste or strass (the French name for it, adopted under
Louis V, when the best paste was made) came very near the look of
diamonds. Paste or strass is glass of a very hard, bright kind, cut in
the way in which diamonds are cut, and mounted in the metals and styles
which usually go with diamond jewellery.
Behind these brilliant bits of cut-glass, silver or tinfoil was put, so
that light falling through the glass should be refracted and reflected
back, as it is in natural crystals such as diamonds. Time affects the
colour of this foil and thus gives a softer beauty to the effect. Old
paste is more beautiful than new paste for another reason, too--being
old glass it has the tints of old glass so often referred to in this
book. Some paste seems to have been made at Bristol, for “Bristows” or
“Bristol diamonds” some of it is called.
The older paste ornaments have the bits of glass set separately,
each setting for each bit separate though touching each other, and
therefore there is much metal shown in the settings; this applies to
the seventeenth-century paste. Later, near the end of the eighteenth
century and afterwards, as now, the bits of glass were sunk within a
continuous grooved or hollow setting, each bit held in place by a small
claw or raised clip of metal soldered on to the general groove. The
setting for white paste was usually silver: coloured pastes were often
set in gold, silver gilt, pinchbeck, bronze, and sometimes in pewter.
Paste consisting of very small pieces is preferable to the larger
varieties. “Diamond” paste is oftener found than “emerald,” “ruby,” or
“sapphire” paste. A certain form of paste (not truly paste) is found in
jewellery set with glass cut and silvered at the back, as if it were a
bit of looking-glass.
A test for the age of paste is the presence of scratches on its
surface, and of dimness brought about by chemical action of the air.
The scratches are oftenest found at the edges and flats of the facets.
GLASS BEADS AND TAWS
Glass _beads_ have been made ever since the making of glass was known,
in Egypt, Europe, and here. The general tests of age given in this book
may be applied to them. Glass _taws_ or marbles made for boys’ games,
or for a game called “solitaire” which used to be fashionable--a kind
of “patience” game with glass taws--used to show the characteristics of
air-spiral or cotton-white or coloured spiral stems.
XIX. GENERAL HINTS AND WARNINGS
INSCRIBED GLASSES
A collector should not miss an opportunity of buying an inscribed glass
cheaply: for instance, a naval rummer, engraved with a cutlass, a dove
with the olive-branch, and “Our brave Allies” for 4s. But fine engraved
and inscribed modern glasses, imitating though not reproducing exactly
the old ones, are on sale in curio-shops.
ROSES, OAK-LEAVES, BIRDS, AND BUTTERFLIES ON GLASS
Eventually any glass with roses, rosebuds, and a bird or butterfly
on it will rank as “Jacobite”; glasses with oak-leaves will also be
thought symbolical of Boscobel. Other such emblems will be discovered,
or are alleged; for instance, the aconite or monk’s-hood flower,
considered as an aspiration for another General Monk, who might restore
the Stuart line.
OLD GLASSES “ENGRAVED UP”
Jacobite, Williamite, and Hanover or Trafalgar glasses being in great
demand, _ingenious persons take a real old wine glass, goblet, or
rummer, that is plain and innocent at the time, and engrave it_ with
Jacobite emblems or “Bonny Prince Charlie’s” head, or William of
Orange on horseback, or “Trafalgar,” or “Nile.” As a rule the evident
newness, roughness, and lack of “wear” of such added engraving condemn
it, to the eye and to the finger; but very ingenious persons use
chemicals, or mud, or attrition, in order to disguise the whitish-grey
tint of newly engraved glass; if part of the engraving be “buffed”
up--that is, polished till it is bright, transparent, and not the tint
of ground glass (see centre of rose, page 70), detection becomes more
difficult.
THE COLLECTOR’S INSTINCT
But after a while the “instinct” of a collector comes into play to
protect him against these and other frauds. He cannot exactly reason
out and state why an offered piece is “wrong,” but he feels that it
is not right; which means that the “altogether” of the glass suggests
to his subconscious mind something which, though not expressed, is a
good reason for not buying the glass. But this “instinct” only comes
after much practice in collecting, and repeated turning of pages for
reference, in a book such as this; a collector’s books should not be
read once and then laid aside; they should be referred to on every
occasion, even after the “instinct” has begun to stir.
LIKELIHOOD AND IMPROBABILITY
Extraordinary chances come to the “picking-up” collector, I know, but
he does well to keep in mind the probability or the unlikelihood of
his “find” being real. It is unlikely that he should more than once
happen upon a Jacobite glass, for example; and again, if he sees a
fine “Trafalgar” glass exhibited in a small jeweller’s shop, with no
other glass at all or any other “curios,” the probability is that some
fraudulent person has planted that false glass there, in what is a
likely place to attract and deceive a collector who “picks up.”
THE ABSOLUTE FRAUDS
Old English and Irish glass has _a soft and mellow tone, both of look
and sound; it has a calm, respectable, honest appearance, as of quality
and honesty combined. Fitness for its purpose, good workmanship, some
quaintness perhaps, but not much fantasy, are visible in it_; if it
is decorated, _the decoration has been done well, but without lavish
artistic imagination_.
Now about the forgeries of it there is _something hard and fast, an
appearance too shiny and shining, and a rigidity of copying_. Seldom
are even two old glasses belonging to a set quite alike, but the
forgeries are exact replicas by the hundred. See one, you see them
all; but see one real old glass, you notice differences in it from all
others. _Forged glass, recently made, is “buffed” or polished on the
wheel all over its surface; old glass was never buffed, and its polish
rather resembles that of old furniture due to “elbow grease”_--the
polish comes of long washing, wiping, and drying.
I have already described the differences of tint. Forged glasses are
clumsy imitations in this, for the forgers do not try to give the old
dark tints--they use lead that is not so impure as the old lead was,
and therefore produces less visible oxide.
The _cutting of old glass, done by hand, produced and displays
irregularities_; so does modern cutting. But _the old irregularities
were due to a lack of machine-like precision, and were natural,
accidental irregularities: the modern irregularities are (so to speak)
mechanical, and obviously due to haste and cheapness of production_.
Labour and time were no great matters with the old workmen; the
counterfeit work is obviously done with the minimum of labour and time.
Modern English-made glass has often a good ring when flicked;
foreign-made frauds on the old have not, or have it seldom.
THE “MODERN ANTIQUE”
Much of the glass sold in the smaller curio-shops as “antique” was not
made to deceive: it is the offering of it in such places which intends
fraud. Most English-made reproductions of old glass in shape and
cutting were not intended by the manufacturer to delude a collector,
but to attract the ordinary buyer for table use or decorative use; one
who is not a collector but “likes something that looks old-fashioned,”
as he says.
Pawnbrokers’ and jewellers’ shops are stocked with what is called in
the trade “the modern antique”; other examples of this are the cheap,
hasty, and obvious copies of miniatures of famous beauties set in new
paste frames and sold for a few shillings. In pawnshops and ordinary
glass-shop windows a collector sees spiral-stem wine glasses made for
modern use and not intended to deceive; they are a kind of tawdrily
ornamental hock glass, embodying some modern designer’s idea of what
is beautiful; they correspond with no antique shape of bowl, the stems
are very thin and fragile, the feet are as small as or smaller than
the rim of the bowl, and the spirals are parti-coloured and “tight.”
No collector need be taken in by such as these--they were not made to
take him in, they are ordinary articles of modern manufacture and daily
commerce.
So are the white glass bowls, tazzas, centre-pieces, vases, “specimen
glasses,” etc., elaborately cut, perhaps engraved also, and meant for
modern tables and mantelpieces. These are copies of the fine old ware
simply because the old ware affords good models, and the information
given in chapter ii of this book will enable a collector to recognize
the modernity of these honest imitations, even when they are found (as
they often are) in a shop supposed to purvey antiques.
OUT-OF-THE-WAY PIECES
I do not say that very unusual and out-of-the-way pieces of old glass
should be avoided; as the collecting of glass increases, many rare old
things will be brought out of cupboards and sold in shops. But I do
say that, as a rule, a collector should feel suspicious of any piece
not resembling those which are pictured in books like this, or those
seen in museum collections. Thus a tall, bulky goblet engraved with a
portrait of William Pitt or Wellington, and inscribed accordingly, if
it is offered for 30s., say, is highly suspicious, to say the least of
it; and the safer course is to refuse apparent bargains of the kind.
FAKED JACOBITE GLASSES, ETC.
This applies even more to the pseudo-Jacobite, Williamite, Nelson,
and other famous glasses which are offered. They may be old glasses
“engraved up,” in which case the only mode of detection is the quality,
finish and tint of the engraving. They may be English-made modern
glass, of the right ring and the old way of manufacture; in which case
the test of tint in the glass itself may be added to the test of the
engraving. In either case the engraving may too closely reproduce an
original glass; it is seldom that two old glasses of this type exactly
resemble each other in the position of the various emblems, portraits,
and so on: for example, the word _Fiat_ is hardly ever found in exactly
the same place on two real old glasses. If the pseudo-Jacobite or other
engraved glass fails to respond to the characteristics of high instep
or domed foot, tint, ring, etc., or any of these, it should be rejected.
FAKED SPIRAL GLASSES
Fraudulent air-spiral or cotton-spiral-stemmed glasses, not engraved or
inscribed, are the fraud most often offered to a collector: in addition
to the other tests mentioned, _the test of the skill and quality of
the spiral itself can be used_ in this case. The _counterfeits show
spirals which are meagre, irregular, tight, or the wrong colour; they
do not fill up the stem, or exactly swell out to fill up the knops;
in the cotton-white there are defects resembling dropped threads in a
piece of linen, or missed stitches in a piece of lace_. I possess one
excellently twisted air-spiral forgery, a simple cable, which might
deceive if the plain glass around it forming the rest of the stem
were not so thick and so distinct as to suggest that the spiral was
made first and the plain glass placed around it afterwards; _the old
spirals, air, cotton-white or coloured, were twisted at the time of and
in the actual making of the whole stem_. Modern spiral stems are often
writhen or ridged on the surface, too; which means that the twisting
of the stem has been done with less than the old amount of skill. In
short, the making of spiral stems is a lost art, not recovered even by
the assiduous forgers, up to the present.
_If a spiral revolves upwards from right to left_--the right to the
left of the person looking at it--_reject it_; this defect was a
feature of the earlier forgeries, but the proper direction of the
upward twist (from left to right) is now used in these fakes.
The old cut stems are more easily imitated: _with these a test is the
absence of all trace of a pontil-mark_. In many old cut glasses the
finger feels a distinct depression, usually circular, which shows where
the old pontil-mark was cut away. In some forgeries, made by moulding,
not by blowing, the pontil-mark is imitated, but so grossly that it
ought not to deceive.
SHAM WINE COOLERS AND FINGER BOWLS
Counterfeit eared wine coolers and beautifully cut counterfeit finger
bowls are on the curio market; the usual tests should detect these.
Imitation Bristol blue, and violet glass is offered, but it is not the
right blue, which passes from a purple in the thick, to a sea-blue in
the thin, parts when held to the light; or not the right violet, in
which the same varying of colour is evident. Dozens of fraudulent white
and violet finger bowls, elaborately cut, are on the market; but it is
the rarest thing to find more than five or six left of any set of old
finger bowls.
OLD DUTCH GLASS
Glassware of the seventeenth and eighteenth century made in the
Lowlands, whether at Liège or Amsterdam, is known over here as “old
Dutch.” Collectors will do wisely to study this ware, whether for the
purpose of rejecting or acquiring it. Most collectors of English and
Irish glass reject it at once; they rightly say that _when thin it is
too light-weight, bubbly, flashy, flat and short of ring, and when
thick too smeary of tint and too clumsy to be first class; and often
the engraving is poor and ugly_. Indeed, there is _something unfinished
and unworkmanlike about it_, compared with the craftsmanship put
into English and Irish old glass; just as there is about Dutch-made
furniture of William and Mary and Queen Anne date, compared with
English-made furniture of the Chippendale period and style. _There is
something unsatisfactory in the look, shape, and proportions; it seems
to lack completeness and fitness._
In the stemmed glasses, however, _the Dutch air spirals are excellently
done--except where they join the foot of the glass, sometimes; and the
cotton-white spirals are hardly inferior to the English except in the
greyness of the colour_. For this reason, and also because the number
of collectors of old glass increases, Dutch wine glasses on spiral
stems go up in price at London auctions nowadays, and a rose glass or
other pretty, well-engraved piece of Flemish or Dutch origin may be
worth acquiring: there are collectors here of the Holland ware already,
and there will be more as English and Irish ware of the kind becomes
more difficult to find and expensive to buy. A spirit bottle, decanter,
goblet, or other piece of Dutch glass that is engraved with armorials
or dates, or names or legends, is not to be disdained, therefore; nor
is any unusual piece that is quaintly quirked, fluted, purfled, and
bossed.
CHIPPED OR BROKEN PIECES
It is sometimes worth while cheaply to acquire a chipped or even
a broken piece of old glass, if it is very rare in kind, form, or
purpose. Chipped feet of wine glasses can be ground again, but it
is hardly worth while; when the foot is almost all gone, a metal
substitute can be made for it, but that is hardly worth while. I know
of a Jacobite glass with a big piece out of the engraved portion
cemented in again; the price of the glass is £40 all the same; but as a
rule it is not worth while to acquire chipped or broken articles of old
glass.
“TOUT PASSE, TOUT CASSE, TOUT LASSE”
The French proverb tells us that everything passes, everything breaks,
everything wearies, at last. But the collector knows better than that;
he prevents old works of art and craft from passing altogether; he
keeps them safe from breaking, and he never wearies of adding to them
or studying them; as I hope this book may enable many a collector to
do.
INDEX
INDEX
ABSOLUTE frauds, 97
Air spiral, 41, 50
Air-spiral stems, 50, 51
BALUSTER stems, 40, 46, 47
Beads, 93
Beer glasses, 60
Belfast-made glass, 18
Bell bowl, 56
Blown ware, 26
Bohemian glass, 13
“Boot” glasses, 74
Bottles, 76
Bowl shapes, 56, 59
Bowls, 79
Bristol cut-glass, 31
coloured glass, 35, 36
opal glass, 35
Butterfly, engraved, 20
CADDY sugar-basin, 27, 88
Candlesticks, 60, 81
“Captain” glasses, 85
“Central tube” stem, 53, 55, 66
Champagne glasses, 53, 61
Chipped or broken pieces, 103
Cider glasses, 61
Coaching glasses, 62, 63
Coins in stems, 7, 47
Collar in stem, 46
Collectable articles, 6
Collector’s instinct, 96
range, 11
Coloured glass, 35
spirals, 54
Communion vessel, 10
Comports, 84
Cork-made glass, 17
Cotton-white spirals, 53
Corrugated stems, 50
Custard glasses, 87
Cut-glass, 29
stems, 55
DECANTERS, 77
Defects of quality, 20, 21
“Diamond” cutting, 30
Dome-foot, 41, 42
Double ogee bowl, 58
Drawn bowl, 49, 56
“Drawn” stems, 49
Drinking glasses, 40
Dutch glass, 19, 21, 102
EGG-CUP bowl, 41, 57
Engraved glass, 33
“Engraved up,” 95
Extensive feet, 41
“FAKED” glasses, 100
Feel of glass, 21
Feet of tumblers, 45
“Fiat” glasses, 68, 69
Firing glasses, 44
Firing-glass foot, 43
Folded foot, 43
Fuddling glasses, 62, 63
GENERAL guides and tests, 14
hints, 95
warnings, 95
Girandoles, 82
Glass knobs, 91
pictures, 90
Goblets, 12, 15, 41
“Greek key” spirals, 54
“HANOVERIAN” glasses, 71
Hemmed foot, 43
High instep foot, 42
“Hobnail” cutting, 30
Hogarth glasses, 64
Hop and barley glasses, 50, 60
IRISH-MADE glass, 17
JACOBEAN lamp, 27
Jacobite glasses, 66, 68
mottoes, 68
Jelly glasses, 86
“Joey” glasses, 62, 73
Jugs, 77
KITCHEN glasses, 64
Knife-rests, 80
Knives, 80
Knopped stems, 40
LAMPS, 27, 83
Likelihood and improbability, 96
Lipped ogee bowl, 58
Lumpy stems, 40
Lustres, 82
“MASTER” glasses, 85
Mirrors, 90
“Modern antiques,” 98
Mugs, 7, 62
Mum glasses, 61
NAILSEA glass, 37
Norwich foot, 43
OAKLEAF on glass, 63, 68
Ogee bowl, 58
“Old Pretender” glasses, 69
Out-of-the-way pieces, 99
PAPER-WEIGHTS, 37
Paste, 92
Pepper boxes, 88
Pestles, 80
Plain round stems, 49
“Pomegranate” cutting, 31, 32
Pontil-marks, 23, 24
Punch-lifters, 79
QUALITY of metal, 19
RECTANGULAR bowl, 57
Rose glasses, 18, 59, 66
Rummers, 16, 61
SALT cellars, 39, 88
Scratches, 22
Shams, 101
Signs of use and wear, 22
“Silver” spirals, 50, 51
Sounds, 18
Spirit glasses, 62
Spoons, 80
Square foot, 45
Star-cutting, 32
Stems, 46-55
Stourbridge glass, 31
Stout stems, 41
Straight-sided bowl, 57
Stuart emblems, 66, 67
Styles of cutting, 30, 31
Sugar-basins, 27, 88
crushers, 80
Sunderland glass, 38, 39
Sweetmeat glasses, 1, 85
TANKARDS, 73
Tavern glasses, 64
Taws, 94
“Tears” in stems, 48
“Thimbleful” glasses, 65
Thistle engraved, 67
“Thistle” glass, 40
Thumb glasses, 45
Tints, 14, 20
Toastmaster glasses, 63
Toddy-lifters, 79
“Trafalgar” glasses, 16, 97
Tumblers, 73
VENICE glass, 12
WAISTED bowl, 58
bell bowl, 57
Waterford glass, 3, 17, 21, 30
Weight, 21
“Williamite” glasses, 71
Window glass, 8
Witch-balls, 8, 38
Workmanship, 25
Wrockwardine glass, 38
“YARD of ale” glasses, 64
Printed in Great Britain by
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
Transcriber's notes:
In the text version, italics are represented by _underscores_, and bold
and black letter text by =equals= symbols. Superscripts are represented
by ^{} and subscripts by _{}.
Missing or incorrect punctuation has been repaired. Inconsistent
spelling and hyphenation have been left as printed.
The following mistakes have been noted:
p.15. Tin Changed to Tint.
p.16. The older the Georgian the glass, extra the removed
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