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.
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.