Old Glass and How to Collect it

by J. Sydney Lewis

FIG. 9.—OPAQUE TWIST STEMS AND “ROSE” GLASSES.

(From the Rees Price Collection, by permission of the Connoisseur.)

value. Before the nineteenth century the scar, where the piece after manufacture was broken away from the pontil, was invariably left rough, instead of being ground down. The foot in the genuine glasses is never flat, there being always a slight slope downwards towards the edge. In the imitations, too, it is apt to be less in diameter, compared with the bowl, than in the genuine specimens, whilst there is frequently an absence of “ring.” This last fact, however, must not be unduly emphasised, since many undoubtedly authentic specimens of this period, including some of the finest, share the defect. Another test is to note the edge of the bowl, whether it is well rounded off or whether it has been left hard and sharp.

Many of these glasses are engraved with flowers. The rose is so frequent as to give its name to a special type, the “rose glasses.” The rose has often a bud or two, and a butterfly is frequently represented as hovering over the flower. In later specimens the butterfly degenerates into a moth, and finally vanishes altogether. Other flowers engraved on glasses of the same type and period were the Rose of Sharon and the St John’s Wort. Rose glasses, with blue and white twisted stems, are in all probability almost exclusively of English manufacture, and are among the most valuable of the opaque-twisted type. The foreign importations of the period were numerous but, apart from certain patterns of twist, which may be considered exclusively English, the twisting of the Low Countries was distinctly inferior. One type is characteristic of the foreign product. This has a central tube of thin white lines, surrounded by spiral twists. Where the stem is of the baluster type, this central tube, more or less, follows the contour of the stem.

Straight-sided Glasses.—The term “straight-sided” may be used to designate a whole series of glasses, of which the bowls are of the shape of a truncated cone, the narrow end being, of course, downward. In process of time the sharpness of the section at the bottom was more and more rounded until it attained the shape of the ogee curve. The earliest of the straight-sided glasses had bulbed stems, with a shoulder and knop. The better sorts of tavern and household glasses were of this type, the larger specimens being used for wine and punch and the smaller for cordials and strong waters. Two points are worthy of notice: the folded foot was practically invariable, and the diameter of the foot was always substantially greater than that of the bowl, thus ensuring a sound support.

The bowls themselves were at first plain. About the middle of the century, however, we find them decorated with conventional flowers and vine leaves, etc., which were gradually replaced by closer and more artistic representations of such natural objects as roses, as a matter of course, lilies of the valley, tulips, and sprays of honeysuckle. Amongst these, however, certain conventional designs held their place, e.g. wild roses, St John’s Wort, and other blossoms with large seeded centres, which seem to have impressed themselves strongly upon the imagination of the artists to whom the decoration was entrusted. The bowls were, in very rare instances, fluted.

The pieces were made in three parts—bowl, stem, and foot—the stem being sometimes plain, oftener air-twisted, and sometimes opaque-twisted. The straight-sided bowl was never popular amongst Continental glass-workers, so that the probability is that any specimen found is of English manufacture. In examples of foreign manufacture, too, the bowl was generally rounded at the base, and the stems were often coloured or opaque-twisted. Other characteristics by which these may be identified are their comparative lightness of weight, their fragility, their coarse lavishness of decoration, their narrow bases, while the twisting of the stems is often unduly close, and the bowls have wide, flat flutes.

Ogee Glasses.—The straight-sided glasses changed by easy degrees into the well-known ogee shape, the lines of the bowl being gradually merged into those of the stem. It may be safely asserted that the majority of ogee-shaped glasses are of English manufacture. The majority have opaque-twisted stems; sometimes blue lines replace the opaque white. It is thought that Bristol was the chief place of manufacture, since most of the finds have been in the west of England. The earliest of them have unfolded feet, inserted air-twisted stems, and naturally, since the object of the designer was to preserve the ogee line, no shoulders. Many of them are of considerable dimensions—a possible result of the custom of drinking bumpers. A great number of the memorial glasses, treated of in a separate chapter, were of this type. The