Part 3

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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_.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

_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.

5. _Rectangular_, a variety of the straight-sided, found with the plain round stem and the air-spiral stem.

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.

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