Of all the English glass none is more beautiful or attractive than the drinking-glasses of this period. Particularly is this true of the engraved and inscribed drinking-glasses which collectors now eagerly seek. Rare, indeed, these glasses have become, and fortunate is the collector who comes across a “find” of the sort. English glass of the eighteenth century, though less ornamental than Venetian, was nevertheless more utilitarian. In respect to the spirit glasses and rummers, which succeeded ale-tankards of metal and of pottery, this is particularly true. No “glasse of Venice” could have withstood the table impact which the English eighteenth-century spirit glasses were designed to survive, a virtue which gave them the name of “firing-glasses,” as the setting down of them by a company surrounding the jovial board produced a noise like a miniature cannonade. Some of these “firing-glasses” in the Leckie Collection, now forming part of the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Art Museum, are engraved with grape-vine designs, and arms, and are inscribed. Of course such engraved and inscribed glasses are of greater interest and rarity than those which are without decoration or inscription.
The method of classification of English drinking-glasses takes into consideration the types of the feet, the types of the bowls, and the types of the stems. There is the plain-footed glass, the glass with the folded foot (so called because the outer circle of the foot is folded back beneath it to strengthen it), the domed foot (shaped as its name suggests), and the domed-and-folded foot glass (a combination of dome and fold). The folded foot is a type which indicates early origin, just as those glasses which have the foot broader than the bowl indicate their origin to have been prior to the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
As to types of bowls, there are the drawn bowl (bowl and stem drawn from a single piece of glass, as in the glasses of the seventeenth century); the bell-shaped bowl, the waist-formed bell bowl, the waisted bowl, the ovoid bowl, the straight-sided bowl, the straight-sided rectangular bowl, the ogee bowl, the lipped ogee bowl and the double ogee form. The waist-formed bell-shaped (waisted-bell) bowl is rarely met with—the early eighteenth century marks its decline—and the waisted bowl is uncommon also. The bell-shaped bowls seem longest to have maintained favor. The Bristol Glass Works originated the ogee bowl shapes, which date from the middle of the eighteenth century.
As to the types of stems, the earliest in design is the baluster stem, in use as early as 1680, and popular till 1730; the plain stem, most frequently met with in glasses from 1700 to 1750; the air-twist stem, in vogue from 1725 to 1775, and perhaps later; the opaque white twist stem, dating from 1745 till the end of the century; the air and opaque white twist stem, the color twist stem, and the cut stem, dating from about the middle of the eighteenth century. Air-bubbles imprisoned in the stems of glasses have given to this type of glass the name of “tear-glass.” Almost without exception the “tears” have their points downward, although glasses showing the reverse of this have in rare instances been met with.
The air-twist stems are an evolution of the tears. The glass containing air-bubbles came to be heated and drawn out and ingeniously manipulated in such a way as to produce the effect of twisted filaments which formed such patterns within the glass as one now and then chances to find. Before manipulation the bubbles were produced artificially by pricking into the glass, softened by heat and covered over, in turn, with a film of molten glass.
The opaque white twist stem, and also the color twist stem, were obtained after the Venetian fashion of making Millefiori glass, described in Chapter XXVII (page 221), as derived from the Roman glass of antiquity. Rare specimens of stems are found with delicate tints of blue and red among the filaments.
All these twist and tear stems are nowadays reproduced and are occasionally fraudulently offered the unwary as genuine. But such glass neither rings true nor is right in color, though the copyists are coming to display their skill in the matter of tint likewise, even though balked by specific gravity. A number of the cut-stem glasses were coaching-glasses—that is, glasses without feet, which stood inverted on the tray when brought to the coach traveler at a relay inn. After his hasty drink the traveler would replace the glass inverted, hence there was no need for a foot; and there was less likelihood of a tray of such glasses, hurriedly carried, coming to grief through carelessness. With the advent of railroads and the decline of coaching such glasses were retired from service. Many of these old-time coaching-glasses were engraved and inscribed, but few of them have survived and a specimen would, indeed, be a pièce de résistance in any collection of glass.
We see from these notes that there is less guesswork connected with the study and collecting of old glass than one uninitiated in the rudiments of its lore might suppose. Nothing is without a reason; the thing is to find the raison d’être—that is a true collector’s pleasure.
Of all the engraved or the inscribed English glass none is more interesting in its historical connection than the Jacobite drinking-glasses. Their story, briefly, is this: After the flight of James II left William of Orange firmly in possession of the government, an act of Parliament, in 1701, formally excluded the house of Stuart from the throne and settled the succession (after William and his sister-in-law Anne should have died) upon the house of Hanover. Prince Charles James Edward, Chevalier of St. George (the son of James II), was recognized by Louis XIV of France as rightful King of England. This led William to prepare to make war on France, when death overtook him, and Anne became Queen of England. Queen Anne, thanks to Marlborough, successfully carried out William’s policies, and every attempt of the Stuarts to regain the throne was frustrated. Anne died in 1714, but as early as 1710 the Cycle, a famous and factious Jacobite club, was formed. Other Jacobite clubs followed throughout England and Scotland. The Jacobites were, of course, those who sought to restore the house of Stuart to the throne, a dangerous treason from the Crown’s point of view, and those Jacobites who had any desire to keep their heads on their shoulders had to proceed with care and secrecy. Nevertheless, even after the rebellion of 1715 and the famous “disappointment” of 1745 the Jacobites, when toasting the king, would hold their drinking-glasses above a bowl of water to signify that they drank to “the king over the water,” the Old Pretender or, after his death, to the Young Pretender.
The bolder Jacobites had their drinking-glasses engraved with Stuart emblems: a heraldic rose and two buds were, for instance, emblematic of James II, his son, and his grandson, while the star, oak-leaves, and acorns, etc., were obvious in allusion. The very boldest Jacobites had glasses inscribed with mottoes—Fiat being the most general one, as this “Let it be done,” was the motto of the Cycle Club, ancestor of Jacobite activity. The more timid Jacobites contented themselves with symbols or inscriptions engraved upon the under side of the foot of the glass. One comes across specimens of the Fiat Jacobite drinking-glass with the two oak-leaves engraved on the foot. Others are engraved with the heraldic rose upon the bowl and a star upon the foot. A large glass—its owner must have been the very boldest Jacobite of all!—is inscribed Audentior Ibo and also bears the portrait of the Young Pretender, whose death in 1788 did not, strangely enough, put an end to Jacobite activities. Indeed, the “Stuart fascination” is one of history’s great mysteries. On the foot of Jacobite glasses one sometimes finds engraved the feathers of the crest of the Prince of Wales; the rose and two buds of the Stuarts on the bowl. Still other glasses are not heraldic, but have the heraldic Stuart rose engraved upon the foot.