FIG. 11.—SWEETMEAT GLASSES. ALE GLASSES.
(From the Rees Price Collection, by permission of the Connoisseur.)
a narrow cone, the stems exemplifying the various patterns of the day—baluster, knopped, double-knopped, air-twisted, opaque-twisted, and drawn. In the later examples the elongation was so pronounced that the glasses approximated to the familiar flute shape. In these the stem is often faceted, the facets sometimes extending some considerable distance up the glass. The modern champagne glass, with a wide saucer-like bowl and a hollow stem, seems to be a sort of combination of the two. The wine being a rarity, the glasses are scarce, and the collector who unearths a genuine specimen of an early eighteenth-century champagne glass may esteem himself fortunate.
The shallow glasses were so little known that a hundred years later, in 1832, Disraeli, writing to his sister, remarks: “We drank champagne out of a saucer of glass mounted on a pedestal of cut glass,” so that the form was evidently a novelty, at least to him.
Sweetmeat Glasses.—Closely allied to the shallow champagne glasses were the sweetmeat glasses. The latter are, however, much solider, while their edges are crinkled and undulated and vandyked into various patterns. The feet are generally domed, sometimes plain, and at other times ribbed or ornamented with knobs. The bowls are generally either of the double-ogee type or bell-shaped with a lip. They are often ribbed in the earlier varieties, and cut in the later ones. The glasses were made in sets, which stood upon a glass pedestal or centre-piece made to a similar pattern. This had a flat, tray-like top, with a raised rim. One interesting feature is that each set consisted of a number of small glasses and one large one, known as a “Captain” or “Master” glass, which was not necessarily of the same pattern as the smaller ones. The Captain had generally an abnormally small foot, so that it might not unduly encroach upon the standing space.
Ale and Beer Glasses.—There is no particular difference between the tall champagne glass and the ale glass; possibly the ale glass was modelled upon the flute-shaped champagne glass, or possibly the shapes were used indiscriminately for both beverages—the finer and more elegant specimens for the champagne, and the heavier and more substantial ones for the humbler ale. That they were so used is sufficiently indicated by the fact that many
SPECIMEN OF IRISH DRINKING GLASSES, SHEWING VARIETY IN CUTTINGS. 18th-19th CENTURY.
