The Glass Circle Journal No.5

The Glass Circle

Editorial Committee

R.J. Charleston

Ray Slack

Wendy Evans

E.T. Udall

Cyril Weeden

Printed by Antique Collectors’ Club Ltd.

First published 1986

The Glass Circle
President:

R.J. Charleston

Honorary Vice-Presidents:

Dr. Donald B. Harden, FSA

Paul Perrot, G.H. Tait

Committee:

Miss W. Evans, Dr. H.J. Kersley, Mrs. B. Morris

E.T. Udall, Dr. D.C. Watts, Cyril Weeden

Honorary Secretary:
Mrs. C.G. Benson

Honorary Treasurer:

P.H. Whatmoor, ACA, 43 Lancaster Road, London W11 1QJ

CONTENTS

Page

The “Amen” Glasses
by R.J. Charleston and Geoffrey Seddon

Glasses for the Dessert I. Introductory
by R.J. Charleston

Glasses for the Dessert II. 18th century English Jelly and Syllabub Glasses
by Tim Udall

Possets, Syllabubs and their Vessels
by Helen McKearin

Jacobite Glasses and their Inscriptions
by F.J. Lelievre

The Flint Glass Houses on the Rivers Tyne and Wear
during the 18th century
by Catherine Ross

The Glass Carafe: 18th-19th century
by John Frost

ILLUSTRATIONS
Pages

Figures 1-17 illustrating “The ‘Amen’ Glasses”

20-26

Figures 1-36 illustrating “Glasses for the Dessert”

41-56

Figures 1-8 illustrating “Possets, Syllabubs and their Vessels”

65-67

Figures 1-5 illustrating “The Flint Glass Houses on the Rivers Tyne and Wear.

83-85

Figures 1-29 illustrating “The Glass Carafe”

90-99

“AMEN” GLASSES

by R.J. Charleston and Geoffrey Seddon

A Paper read to the Circle on 19 June, 1979

Introductory by R.J. Charleston

The “Amen” glasses appear first in English glass
literature, like so much else, in the pages of Albert

Hartshorne’s
Old English Glasses,
published in 1897.

Hartshorne had already discovered six of the glasses,

and described them in some detail in his book.’ Some
of the glasses he knew still exist and will be mentioned
in the course of this Paper. As with most pioneering

books, Hartshorne’s was followed by a spate of pot-

boilers. The first, and perhaps the best, of these was

Percy Bate’s
English Table Glass,
which came out in

1905. Writing of “Jacobites”, he says: “Most of the

Jacobite glasses are memorials of the second attempt to
regain the throne of Britain, the famous “forty-five”;

but there are a few which have reference to that of

A.D. 1715 . . . “, and refers to an illustration: ‘As will
be seen, it bears (executed with the diamond) the

cypher of the “Old Pretender”, I.R. beneath a crown,

and within a beautiful border two verses of the

Jacobite song, “God save the King”, which was after-
wards paraphrased into the Hanoverian National

Anthem. The second verse runs thus:—

“God Bliss the Prince of Wales,
The True born Prince of Wales,
Sent us by Thee.

Grant us one favour more,

The KING for to Restore,
As Thou has done before,

The Familie.”

The glass he illustrates is one then belonging to Dr.
Perry, of Glasgow, and is additional to the half-dozen

listed by Hartshorne.
2
The other early collectors’

books do less well. Daisy Wilmer, in her
Early English

Glass,
published in 1910, merely says: “A few

fortunate families of ancient pedigree can lay claim to

owning Old Pretender glasses inscribed with verses of
patriotic songs, and another example has been traced

to Boulogne . . . ” — a reference to the “Vaillant”

glass already mentioned by Hartshorne.
3
J. Sydney

Lewis, in
Old Glass and how to collect it
(1916), contents

himself with the remark, somewhat discouraging to
the would-be collector: “Of the Jacobite glasses, those

dedicated to the Old Pretender are entirely beyond the
hopes of the ordinary collector. A few exist in old

country houses dotted up and down the country and in

various museums… ”
4

— all somewhat vague.

Maclver Percival, in
The Glass Collector,
published two

years later, was a little more helpful: “There are some
very early Jacobite glasses (of which Mr. Hartshorne

only knew six and but very few have been discovered

since), which are in honour of the “Old
Pretender” …. Except one, a shouldered glass (now

in the National Museum of Antiquities at Edinburgh)

the bowls are all, as far as I am aware, of the “drawn”
variety. Some of the stems are air twists and some

plain . ..”
3
These are useful details, but include

nothing which is not in Hartshorne. It will be noticed

that none of these refer to “Amen glasses”, but only

to “Old Pretender glasses”.
The 1920s witnessed a series of far more substantial

books. H. J. Powell in his
Glass-making in England

(1923) published two illustrations of “Amen” glasses,
one a reproduction of Hartshorne’s drawing, the other

a photographic illustration of the glass in the National

Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh, but used them

only as props to his system of chronology.
6

Francis

Buckley, however, in
A
History of Old English Glass

(1925) illustrated the Burn-Murdoch glass, an
addition to the list, then in the Hamilton Clements

Collection. He was apparently using it mainly to
demonstrate the quality of diamond-point engraving,
but he dedicated a quite lengthy caption to it,

specifying that “the inscription commemorates the
Old Pretender (“James VIII of Scotland”). . . “, and

adding that it came “from the Murdochs of
Gartincaber House”! The following year, 1926, is
the
annul mirabilis
for the study of the subject. Grant

Francis’s
Old English Drinking Glasses
appeared with a

long and substantial chapter on “Glasses devoted to

the Jacobite Cause and Clubs”, and here for the first

time the glasses are referred to as “Amen glasses”.

Grant Francis states that “some ten or twelve are now

known to exist”, and illustrated one of them, then in

the possession of Messrs. Arthur Churchill — pro-

bably the Bruce of Cowden glass’ Since Grant
Francis gives a good description, it may serve at this

point as an introduction to the physical characteristics

of the whole group:

“The engraved device is in diamond point, and

consists of the Royal cipher of “King James VIII”,

who was proclaimed at St. Germains on the 16th
September, 1701. The letters are “J.R.” direct and
reversed, with the figure “8” cunningly worked in the

scroll at the base of the monogram; also engraved on

the bowl and sometimes on the foot appear two or
more verses of the Jacobite paraphrase of “God Save

the King”. From the fact that these glasses all give his

Scottish title, it is practically certain that they
originated north of the Tweed.
“The full Jacobite hymn is interesting, and worth

inserting
in extenso.
The first verse sounds familiar to us

today (bar the word “soon”), but the others were
frankly treasonable in the reign of King George I:

God save the King, I pray

God bliss the King, I pray
God Save the King

Send him victorious
Happy and glorious

Soon to reign over us,
God Save the King
9

God Bliss the Prince of Wales,

The true-born Prince of Wales,

Sent us by Thee.

Grant us one favour more,
The King for to restore,

As thou hast done before,
The familie.

God save the Church, I pray,

God bliss the Church I pray,
Pure to remain.

Against all heresie,

And Whig’s hipocrasie,

Who strive maliciouslie,
Her to defame.

God bless the subjects all,

And save both great and small
In every station.

That will bring home the King,
Who hath best right to reign,

It is the only thing,
Can save the Nation.
Amen

“In this hymn, as inscribed, collectors have always

considered the “true-born Prince of Wales” to refer to

Prince Charles Edward, and the glasses were probably

made and inscribed to celebrate his birth on the 31st

December, 1720. But there is little doubt that the

hymn itself was in use long before that, and originally
referred to James II as King, whilst the reference to

the “true-born Prince of Wales” was in refutation of

the Whig calumny that James Francis Edward was not

the King’s son at all, but was smuggled into the Royal
bedchamber in a warming-pan.”‘° Francis concludes

that the glasses were made after the 1715 Rebellion,
their type and style suggesting a date after 1720, and

although mentioning Hartshorne’s original suggestion
that they might have been engraved in France, points

out that the spelling “bliss” for “bless”, on which this
suggestion was based, was in fact quite usual in 18th

century Lowland Scots. He points out that some of the
glasses were drawn-stem air-twists, but that they were

unlikely to be much later than the plain drawn-

stems.”
The second book which distinguished 1926 was

Joseph Bles’s
Rare English Glasses of the 17th and 18th

centuries.
Bles too refers to “Amen” glasses, but adds

little to Hartshorne and Grant Francis beyond

illustrating three further examples with excellent
photographs.
12
The glasses in question were one in

the G.F. Berney Collection from Drummond Castle,
home of the Dukes of Perth, staunch Jacobites; the

second from Bles’s own collection; and a third in the

Peech collection. Bles had obtained his glass from the

sale of Mrs. John Fisher, of Ham Common; it is now
in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
13
Bles noted that

in addition to the four verses of the Jacobite hymn this
glass also bore dedications “To His Royal Highness

The Duke” and “To the Increase of the Royal
Family”. The importance of these illustrations will be

dealt with by Dr. Seddon in his part of this paper.
From this point onwards the story of the “Amen”

glasses may be considered to have “taken off”, great

attention being paid to the glasses when they turned
up in the Sales Rooms, with full descriptions and good

illustrations. The general position was ably reviewed,
and a dating within the period 1740-52 suggested, in

an important article by W. Horridge and E.

Barrington Haynes in
The Connoisseur

for Sept.,

1942.
14
Occasionally new glasses were received into

the fold, notably three with remarkably good Scottish

pedigrees, which were brought to people’s notice in

the ’40s and ’50s. In 1942 E.A. Herraghty published

an article “A Discovery at Dunvegan”, dealing with

a glass bearing two verses of the anthem, but inscribed
on the foot “Donald MacLeod of Gualtergil in the Isle

of Skye. The Faithful Palinurus. Aet. 69 anno 1747”.

This man had been the pilot of the boat which carried
Prince Charles from Borrodale through the Western

Isles after Culloden, whence the reference to
Palinurus, the pilot of Aeneas in Virgil’s
Aineid.
15
In

1951 Churchill’s
Glass Notes
drew attention to a glass

in the family of Maxwell-Stuart of Traquair. This one
had on the foot “Prosperity to the family
of

Traquair”, and in the second verse of the anthem had
the spirited variation –

“Send him soon over
And kick out hannover

And then we’ll recover

Our old Libertie.”

Of Traquair it was said that after Charles’s visit in
1745 the old gates were closed, “the Earl saying they
would never be opened again until a Stuart came to
the throne of Scotland”.
16
The following year Cyril

Wallis published “An Unrecorded ‘Amen’ glass in the

Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh” with the foot

inscribed “A Bumper” and “To the Prosperity of the

Family of Lochiell”. Cameron of Lochiel was the first

important Highlands chief to rally to the cause of

Charles Edward after his landing at Borrodale from

Eriskay towards the end of July, 1745. The MacLeod

glass speaks for itself, although its presence at

Dunvegan is ironical, since on this occasion the
MacLeod of the day had opposed the Stuart cause.”

These three glasses, however, amply illuminate the

character of the whole series. They are individual

glasses, made normally for loyalist families in specified

houses and are not parts of services like the Jacobite

sets found at Oxburgh Hall or Chastleton House.
To understand the role the “Amen” glasses would

have played, one must turn back to the social customs

of Scotland in the first half of the 18th century. Direct

information from this early period is difficult to find,

but some reflected light from a slightly later period is

not hard to come by. H.G. Graham in his
Social Life

of Scotland in the 18th century,
basing himself mainly on

Thomas Somerville’s
My Life and Times, 1741-1814

(published in Edinburgh in 1861) wrote: “To serve for

the family, there was in many a household only one
glass or tankard, which was handed on to the next
person in succession as each finished his draft… “:
18

and the
Statistical Account of Scotland
record that in Banff

in 1748 a company might drink twelves bottles from

one glass, in 1798 one bottle from twelve glasses, an
evident sign of degeneracy.
19
Adam Petrie, in his

Rules of Good Deportment
(1720) advises: “Be sure to

wipe your mouth before you drink, and when you

drink hold in your breath until you have done, which
is certainly very loathsome to the company.”

Graham records further, probably of the end of the

century or later: “When the table was cleared of

viands, and the glasses once more were set on the

shining mahogany, each person proposed the health of
every other person present severally and thus if there
were ten guests there were ninety healths drunk, with

serious consequence to the health of all. There were
also rounds of toasts, each gentleman naming an

absent lady, each lady an absent gentleman. Next
followed “sentiments”, as another excuse for further

imbibing. Each person was called on in turn to

propose a wish called a “sentiment” — it might be

some crisp sentence, a poetic phrase, a jovial proverb,

or, as generally a fatuous moral reflection ..

Specimens of such sentiments range from: “When
we’re gaun up the hill o’ fortune may we ne’er meet

a frien- comin’ doun” to “May the hinges o’

friendship never rust, or the wings o’ luve lose a

feather” .
2
° To furnish a stock of these a book called

The Gentleman’s New Bottle Companion
was published in

Edinburgh in 1777. In short, no opportunity was

missed for sending the glass circling. Similar

conditions obtained in England and Ireland and no

doubt elsewhere earlier in the century. We may learn

something of them from the
Memoirs

of an Irish
desperado named Captain Peter Drake. In 1702 in

Brussels he records: “Dinner being at an end, and the

glass circling briskly, we became very merry”, a state

in which he often found himself. Some time between

1710 and 1712 he had an encounter with Lord
Mohun: “as soon as supper was over, glasses and a

bottle of Burgundy, with a flask of Champaign was

laid on the table, with a supply of those wines on a

dumb-waiter. My Lord lov’d bumpers, and ply’d me

pretty hard with the same. I had a pretty strong head,

and could bear wine at least as well as his
Lordship, . . . we sat to it the rest of the night, drinking

all the loyal toasts then in vogue,and were as cheerful

and friendly as might be .. ..”
21

Twenty years later

(1732-33) two sea-cooks, just returned from the
voyage to America, got gloriously drunk: ” . . . says he
“Let’s take some Cartridges of Powder, and make

Wildfire to run about the Streets, for the Glory of
God, that we are come safe to old England; and so I
came by this Powder, sweet Jesus Almighty knows it

to be true. As for the Pistol this Cook was an
Hannoverian, and a loyal Soul he was to his Majesty,

and so he gave me this Pistol, and we drank our

Sovereign Lord King George’s Health, and at every
glass we fired off a Pistol in Honour of the Royal
Family; and the Lord alone knows, that this is the

truth of the Matter, and that I had this Pistol on no

other Account than to show my Loyalty!
”

22
There

were, however, also disloyal toasts. In 1715 — a

significant year for us — Peter Drake was in Leicester:
“We were not long here when there was an account of
the Lord Mar’s putting himself at the head of the

rebels in Scotland. This emboldened the inhabitants of

the town to shew their inclination to favour the

Pretender’s cause, if an opportunity offered.’ They

would publickly drink his health, by the style and title

of King James III, in the presence of the officers and
dragoons, which caused many quarrels . ..”” In

1707 Drake himself had been “framed” by the Keeper

of the Marshalsea prison, who made a prisoner drunk

and caused him to write at his dictation a letter to Lord
Sunderland “signifying that there was one Drake . . . a

prisoner in the Marshalsea, who expected soon to be

tried, and daily (to add to his crimes) made it his

diversion in company to drink treasonable healths,

such as to the Pretender, by the title of James the
Third, King of England, to Lewis the Fourteenth,
King of France, and all his friends and well-wishers,

etc., and confusion to Queen Ann, and the Parliament

of England, etc . .
“24

If such episodes were possible in mainly loyal

Hanoverian England, how much the more must the

drinking of treasonable toasts have been commonplace
north of the Border. With the circling glass, and the

never-failing excuse for another round, the “Amen

glasses” fit perfectly. Apart from the loyal toasts,
represented by the King and the Prince of Wales, we

get “To His Royal Highness the Duke” (Henry,

Duke of Albany and York) and “To the increase of the
Family” (which probably refers more to the increase

of influence than of numbers); and then “Prosperity to
the family of Traquair” and “to the Prosperity of the
Family of Lochiell”, etc. Of these toasts we find on

other glasses of the group: “A Bumper to the Noble

and the True Patriot of his Countrey the Right Honle

George Earle Marshal etc. etc. Hereditary Earl
Marshal of Scotland”: “God bless all Loyal Subjects”

(presumably in lieu of the fourth verse of the anthem):

“God bless and restore the son of the Father we had

before”: and “A Bumper. The memory of Mr. David
Drummond 1743” and “Prosperity to the Bank of

Scotland”
.
25

With Jacobites as with Hanoverians, the King came

first. William Hickey, in his
Memoirs,
records an

incident at Madras about 1770: “At this our first

dinner at the Government house a very laughable
incident occurred. Among the guests was an Irish

clergyman named Yates, recently arrived from

Europe . . . who appeared to know little of mankind or

of general manners . . .. The cloth being removed, two

glasses were, according to custom, put before each
person. The Governor then pushed the bottles to Mr.

Yates, saying, “We always drink the King, sir, and
God bless him, as our first toast”. Mr. Yates who had

not been in the habit of seeing two glasses, took it for
granted it was also an. Indian custom, and filled both,

which he emptied to the King. .
”

26
The King’s

health was paramount. And, as Mrs. Steevenson has
pointed out,
27
“Amen” is the equivalent of “Fiat” –

“so be it” — a solemn confirmation of a sacred
pledge.

A word requires to be said of the anthem. Sir Percy

Scholes in
God Save the King!,

published in 1942, cites

The General Advertiser
of 28 September, 1745,

announcing that Mr. Lacey, Master of his Majesty’s

Company of Comedians at Drury Lane, had applied

for leave to raise 200 men in defence of King and

Government. On the same evening “the Audience at

the Theatre Royal in Drury-Lane were agreeably
surpriz’d by the Gentlemen belonging to that House
performing the Anthem of God save our noble
King.. ..” The music was by Dr. Arne, then musical

director at Drury Lane. These two events have to be
taken in conjunction, and it is almost certainly no

coincidence that the first printed version of words and

music together appeared in
Thesaurus Musicus
in 1744.

The tune was at that time, however, by no means new.
In its original form it appears to go back to a keyboard
piece of 1619 by John Bull (appropriately enough),

and before that something like it appears as a galliard

in the 16th century and before that as a plain-song

antiphon for the Saturday before the Seventh Sunday
after Pentecost, the words (suitably enough) being the

Scriptural account of the coronation of Solomon (in I
Kings, i. 38-40). Versions of the tune appear three

times in the work of Purcell, one being a catch printed

in 1685 “Upon the Duke’s return”, the Duke in

question being the Duke of York, later James II. The

second verse began: “To
God save the King and Duke

they replied”. Dr. Burney, writing in the early years

of the 19th century, said: “Old Mrs. Arne, mother of

Dr. Arne and Mrs. Cibber, a bigoted Roman

Catholic, assured me at the time, 1746, that
God save

the King
was written and sung for KING JAMES, in

1688, when the Prince of Orange was hovering over

the coast; she said she had heard it sung not only at the

Playhouse but in the Street.” This is confirmed in a

letter to David Garrick written in October, 1745. In

short, 1745, the year of the second Rebellion, was the

occasion of the real establishment of the National
Anthem as an institution, and this fact is important in

the dating of the “Amen” glasses.
28

Lastly, before I hand over to Dr. Seddon, it should

perhaps be added that, apart from the drawn-stem

trumpet-bowl glasses either with a tear in the stem or
an air-twist, there are a few isolated glasses of other

forms. Allusion has already been made to the four-

sided pedestal-stem glass in the National Museum of
Scotland. This has the first verse of the anthem

followed by the date 1716, and the second (“God bless
the Prince of Wales”) followed by “1745”. The
placing of these dates is probably significant, and they

give the impression of being integral with the scrolled

decoration — that is, a presumably already existing

glass was engraved in 1745 or shortly thereafter. In the

Philadelphia Museum there are two “Amen” glasses

which are atypical, one with a double-series air-twist,

the other with an incised twist, both having round-

funnel bowls. Two of the surviving air-twist glasses

have a knop with tears at the base of the stem. Out of

a total of more than thirty glasses, this represents a fair
uniformity of type concentrated on the drawn-stem

glasses, with or without air-twist. The bulk of them
might very well have come from a single source, but

we certainly do not know what that source was.

Assuming that the date of the glasses ranges between

about 1740 and 1750, it seems rather unlikely that
they were made in Scotland itself. The 18th century

history of glass-making there is extremely vague, but
present evidence suggests that of the two early

glasshouses which might have made flint glass,

Wemyss is not known to have continued much into the

18th century, while Prestonpans was closed in 1732.

Alloa and Dumbarton were not started until about

1750, and Verreville (Glasgow) only in 1770. Only the
Edinburgh and Leith Glass Co. is left, and there is no

certain evidence that they were making flint glass

before the middle of the century, their forte being in
any case bottles. Certainly, statistics for the whole of

Scotland, dating from 1771, indicate that flint glass

was by weight a mere 11.8% of the window-glass

produced, and 2.34% of bottle-glass.

29
On the whole

an origin in England, perhaps Newcastle, seems far
more probable.

Finally, who can have engraved the glasses? The old

idea of their being engraved in France has already

been scouted. The uniformity of their style and
calligraphy points to a single artist, and the only

feasible answer to the conundrum seems to lie in the

hypothesis either of a central source such as
Edinburgh, where the families could, as it were, have

done their shopping; or, far more likely in my view,
a single person who visited the scattered settlements in

the Highlands and executed the engravings to local

commission but imposing his own formula (perhaps all
that he knew). We know that in other sparsely

inhabited parts of Europe glass was normally

distributed by glass-carriers, and that elsewhere these

men were capable of doing simple engraving to satisfy

local needs — initials, inscriptions and emblems.’

The engraver of the “Amen” glasses may well have

been of this brotherhood.

NOTES

1.
Albert Harshorne,
Old English Glasses,
London and New

York (1897), pp. 346-9, Pl. 56.

2.
Percy Bate,
English Table Glass,

London (first published

by George Newnes, republished by B.T. Batsford,

1913), p. 99, Pl. LII, No. 200.

3.
Daisy Wilmer,

Early English Glass,
London (3rd ed.,

n.d.), p. 166. The date 1910 is given by W.A. Thorpe,

A History of English and Irish Glass,
London (1929), p.

346.

4.
J. Sydney Lewis,
Old Glass and how to Collect it,

London

(1916), p. 103.

5.
Maciver Percival,
The Glass Collector,
London (n.d.), p.

140. The date 1918 for this book is given by Thorpe,
Lc.

6.
H. J. Powell,
Glass-Making in England,
Cambridge,

(1923), figs. 49, 52.

7.
Francis Buckley,
A History of Old English Glass,
London

8.
Grant R. Francis,
Old English Drinking Glasses, their

Chronology and Sequence,
London (1926), pl. LX, No.

351.

9.
There are variants of this verse, running “God bliss the

King, I pray/God save the King, I pray” and “Long

to reign over us” in the fourth line (see, e.g., Nos. 20,

39 below).

10.
Grant R. Francis,
op. cit.,

pp. 167-9.

11.
Ibid.,
p. 168.

12.
Joseph Bles,

Rare English Glasses of the 17th and 18th

Centuries,
London (n.d.), pp. 85-90, 94, 98, Pls. 24-8.

The date 1926 is given by Thorpe,
l.c.

13.
See No. 3 below.

14.
W. Horridge and E.B. Haynes, “The ‘Amen’

Glasses”,
The Connoisseur,
CX (Sept., 1942), pp. 47-50.

15.
E.A. Herraghty, “A Discovery at Dunvegan”,

SMT

Magazine and Scottish Country Life,
XXX, No. 6 (Dec.,

1942), pp. 23-5.

16.
W. Churchill, Ltd.,
Glass Notes,
12 (Dec., 1952), pp.

11-12.
17. W. Cyril Wallis, “An unrecorded ‘Amen’ Glass in the

Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh”,
The Connoisseur

(Oct., 1952), p. 105.

18. Henry Grey Graham,
The Social Life of Scotland in the 18th

century,
London (1928), p. 10.

19.
Statistical Account of Scotland,
XX, p.364,

cit.

M. Plant,

The Domestic Life of Scotland in the 18th century,
Edinburgh

(1952), p. 44.

20. H.G. Graham,
op. cit.,

p. 78.

21. S. Burrell (ed.),
Amiable Renegade: the Memoirs of Capt.

Peter Drake, 1671-1753,
Stanford, California (1960), pp.

56, 214.

22. A.P. Herbert,
Mr. Gay’s London,
London (1948), pp.

9-10.

23.
Op. cit.
in n. 21, p. 6.

24.
Ibid.,
p. 119.

These toasts are found on Nos. 28, 29, 30 and 36 below,
respectively,.

26.
Alfred Spencer (ed.),

Memoirs of William Hickey,
I,

London (1926), p. 169.

27.
M.T. Steevenson, “Amen and Fiat”, a lecture given to

the Circle on 2 May, 1940 (Paper no. 11). This arrived

independently at a number of the conclusions reached

in the present paper.

28.
Percy Scholes,

God Save the King!,
London (1942), pp.

9-18.

29.
Arnold Fleming,
Scottish and Jacobite Glass,

Glasgow

(1938); John L. Carvel,
The Alloa Glass Work. . . ,

Edinburgh (1953): R. Oddy, “Scottish Glass Houses”,
Glass Circle Paper,
No. 151.

30.
R.J. Charleston, “The Transport of Glass: 17th-18th

Centuries”,
Annales du 4! Congris des journies

Internationales du Verre”,
Liege (n.d., 1968?), pp.

183-192; G. Boesen, “Glaskraemmere og glassnidere”,
Kulturminder (1961),
pp. 129 ff.

(1925), p. xviii, Pl. XVIII.

25.

APPENDIX

A tentative handlist of recorded “Amen” glasses

This list has been compiled on a foundation

provided by the late E. Barrington Haynes and the

late W. Horridge in the form of a skeleton list, often
accompanied by notes and photographs, and of

correspondence between them in the years 1940 to
1949. These papers were generously handed over to

me by Mr. D.A. Crompton, of Arthur Churchill,
Ltd., and have been considerably expanded over the

intervening years. Nevertheless, there are many gaps,

and doubtless many errors, these often caused by the

fact that some glasses pass from one hand to the next

without adequate record, so that one glass may give

the illusion of being several: without photographs at
each stage it is often difficult to pin down the identities

of these examples. The author would be grateful for
corrections and additions, particularly in the details of

the pedigrees.
Sales by auction are recorded wherever possible, but

not sales by or between dealers unless the record of

such a transaction provides a vital link in the history

of a glass.
The Jacobite anthem is to be found on p. 5 above.

Divergent readings only are commented on in these

notes.
The following works cited in the list are abbreviated

as shown below:—
Bate — Percy Bate,
English Table Glass,
London

(1913).

Bles (1926) — Joseph Bles,
Rare English Glasses of the

17th and 18th centuries,
London (n.d. ?1926).

Buckley,
Q.E.G. —

F. Buckley,
A History of Old

English Glass,
London (1925).

Connoisseur
(Sept., 1942) — W. Horridge and E.B.

Haynes, “The ‘Amen’ Glasses”,
The Connoisseur

(Sept., 1942), pp. 47-50.

Fleming — A. Fleming,
Scottish and Jacobite Glass,

Glasgow (1938).

Francis — Grant R. Francis,
Old English Drinking

Glasses, their Chronology and Sequence,
London

(1926).

Glass Notes —
Arthur Churchill, Ltd.,
Glass Notes,

various dates.

Hartshorne — A. Hartshorne,
Old English Glasses,

London and New York (1897).

JGS —
Journal of Glass Studies,
various dates.

Risley (1920) — (Sir) John Shuckburgh Risley,

“Jacobite Wine Glasses. Some Rare

Examples”,
Burlington Magazine,
XXXVI (June,

1920), pp. 276-87.

A. TWO-PIECE GLASSES WITH PLAIN
DRAWN STEMS
1. PERRY OF MAMBEG

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem with

elongated tear. H. 6
%a

in. (6

6
/l6in.) Crown,

cipher and large 8. Two-verse anthem and
“Amen”. Tiny piece of silica on edge of foot-rim.

Pedigree.
Dr. Perry (exhibited in Glasgow in 1905)

— Mrs. Perry of Mambeg, Garelochhead (sold

Sotheby’s 27.6.1924, Lot 36) — George
Henderson (sold Knight, Frank & Rutley

2.10.1952, Lot 60) — (?) T.S: Lucas of Haxby
Hall (sold Sotheby’s 16.10.1972, Lot 194) — M.

Bucks. (sold Sotheby’s 10.2.1956, Lot 22).

Lit.
Risley (1920), p. 281; Bate, Pl. 52, No. 200;

Glass Notes,
12 (Dec. 1952), p. 12 (? erroneously

described as “ex-Turnbull”).
2.

DUNVEGAN
(figs. 8c, 9a, b)

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem with
tear. Bowl broken. H. 7in. Crown missing, cipher
partially missing. Remains of two-verse anthem

and “Amen”. Round the foot is the inscription:

“Donald MacLeod of Gualtergil in the Isle of

Skye. The Faithful Palinurus. Aet. 69 anno
1747.’

Pedigree.
Dunvegan Castle, Isle of Skye.

Lit.
Edward A. Herraghty, “A Discovery at

Dunvegan”
SMT Magazine and Scottish Country

Life,
XXX, No. 6 (Dec. 1942), pp. 23-5;

Connoisseur
(Sept. 1942 and Sept. 1943); E.B.

Haynes, “An Historic Relic”,
Antiques
(Mar.

1944).

3.
FISHER OF HAM COMMON
(figs. 8d, 13a,

14a, 15a, c)

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem with

tear. H. 7in. Crown, cipher with 8 intertwined.
Four-verse anthem (2 on foot; “bless” for

“bliss”), AMEN, and “To His Royal Highness
the Duke” and “To the Increase of The Royal

Family” in panels on bowl.

Pedigree.
Mrs. John Fisher, Ham Common,

Richmond, Surrey (sold Sotheby’s 27.6.1924,

Lot 38) — Joseph Bles (sold Christie’s 16.7.1935

Lot 34) — Sir Bernard Eckstein — Ashmolean

Museum, Oxford.

Lit.
Bles (1926), pp. 95-7, Pls. 26-7;

Glass Notes,

12 (Dec. 1952),
p. 13;

Connoisseur
(Sept. 1942), p.

49, No. V.

4.
HENRY BROWN

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem with

wide tear, folded foot. H. 7 Y2 in. Crown, cipher

with 8 intertwined. Four-verse anthem and
“Amen”, with further inscription “To His Royal

Highness PRINCE HENRY Duke of Albany &

York” and “XX Decem.”
Pedigree.
David R.S. Crabb, Scotland (sold

Christie’s 7.5.1936, Lot 16) — Henry Brown

(sold Sotheby’s 14.11.1947, Lot 279).

Note. W.
Horridge stated this glass came from the

collection of C.B.O. Clarke.

5.
TRAQUAIR
(fig. 8j)

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem with
elongated tear. Crown, cipher and “Amen”.

Two-verse anthem, the second concluding “Send

him soon over / And kick out hannover / And

then we’ll recover / Our old Libertie”, with

further inscription “Prosperity to the family of
Traquair”.

Pedigree.
Traquair House, F. Maxwell-Stuart

(1951).
Lit.
Exh. Bute House, Edinburgh, Aug. / Sept.

1949; “The Traquair Amen Glass”,
Glass Notes,

11 (Dec. 1951), pp. 12-13.

MESHAM
(fig. 1)

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem with

oval tear. H. 8 1/2 (8%) in., foot chipped. Crown,
cipher with small 8 below, “AMEN”. Four-verse

anthem; with additional inscription: “To His

Royal Highness, Prince Henry, Duke of Albany

and York” and date “1749”.

Pedigree.
The Lindsey family of Fife (probably

Pitscottie) — Colonel Mesham, bought from his

daughter by Messrs. Arthur Churchill and sold to

— George F. Berney (sold Christie’s 30.6.1936,

Lot 130, repeated 26.4.1937, Lot 116) — Jerome

Strauss — Corning Museum of Glass.
Lit.
Hartshorne, p. 347, Pl. 56; Bles (1926), Pls.

24-25 (wrongly stated to come from Drummond

Castle); Wine Trade Loan Exhibition (1933), No.

315(a), Pl. CXVII; A. Churchill Ltd.,
History in

Glass
(1937), P1. 8, No. 30;
Cat. of Old English

Glass
(1937), p. 66, No. 530; Anon.,

“Glassmaking History in Drinking Vessels”,

Antiques
(Aug. 1941), p. 80;
Connoisseur

(Sept.

1942), pp. 47, 50, No. 1; E.B. Haynes, “An

Historic Relic”,
Antiques

(Mar. 1944); Corning,

Glass Drinking Vessels from the Strauss Collection

(1955), pp. 99
–
100, No. 247.

7.
BURN MURDOCH

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem with
long divided tear. H. 7%in. Crown, cipher with

8 in the lower part. Two-verse anthem and

“Amen”.
Pedigree.
Dr. T. Burn Murdoch, Gartincaber,

Doune, Perthshire (sold Sotheby’s 27.6.1924, Lot

37) — Hamilton C. Clements — Capt. W.
Horridge (sold Plaish Hall, Cardington, Church

Stretton, Salop., by Jackson-Stops & Staff,

30.11.1959, Lot 368) — Dr. Peter H. Plesch –

“a lady” (sold Christie’s 4.6.1980, Lot 153).

Lit.
Buckley,
O. E. G. ,
Pl. XVIII;

Connoisseur

(Sept. 1942), p. 51, No. X; Peter H. Plesch,
“English & Continental Glass in the Collection of

Dr. & Mrs. Peter H. Plesch”,
JGS,

VII (1965), p.

81, fig. 6; V. and A. Exh.
English Glass
(1968),

Cat.
No. 122.

Note.
In 1924 this glass was stated to have “been

in the owner’s family since the 18th century and

is said to have been made to commemorate the
visit of “the Old Pretender” to the House after

the battle of Sherriffmuir” (13.11.1715).

8.
PALMER DOUGLAS

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem with

large tapering tear. H. 7in. Crown, cipher with

small 8 in lower part. Four-verse anthem (“bless”
for “bliss”, the last verse on the foot), AMEN,

and “To His Royal Highness The Duke and the
Increase of the Royal Family”, scroll border on

foot.
Pedigree.

Mrs. Archibald Palmer Douglas, of

Midgard, Hawick, Roxburghshire (sold

Christie’s 15.12.1936, Lot 28) — Steuben Glass,
New York (apparently in 1941) — Metropolitan

Museum of Art, New York (Arthur Houghton

gift, Mus. No. 41.164).
Lit.
Fleming (1938), p. 178;
Antiques
(Nov. 1941)

Steuben Glass advert.;
New York Times

(n.d.,

notifying gift to M.M.A.).

9.
LOCHIEL
(figs. 3, 8h, i)

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem with

tear, folded foot. Crown, cipher with small 8 in

lower part, “Amen”. Two-verse anthem

(“bless” for “bliss”), and on the foot “A
Bumper”, “To the Prosperity of the Family of

Lochiell”.
Pedigree.
Probably Camerons of Lochiel (sold in

Edinburgh in (?)1952) — Royal Scottish

Museum, Edinburgh.
Lit. W.
Cyril Wallis, “An Unrecorded ‘Amen’

Glass.. ..”
Connoisseur
(Oct. 1952) p. 105;

Glass

Notes
12 (Dec. 1952), pp. 11-12.

10.
RISLEY

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, drawn stem with

single-series air-twist. H. 6% (6%) in. Crown,

cipher with small 8 in lower part, “Amen”. Two

verses of anthem on bowl, the third on the foot,
together with perhaps the first line of the 4th

verse, interrupted by a break, but containing the

word “subjects”.
Pedigree.
Purchased in Yorkshire and sold to Sir

John Risley (before 1920) — McBean (sold
26.6.1931, Lot 84) — Capt. Craig — National

Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (1959).
Lit. Connoisseur
(Nov. 1919); Risley (1920), pp.

276, 281, Pl. I, 1-3;
Connoisseur
(Sept. 1942), p.

49, No. IV; Rex Ebbott,
British Glass. . . ,

Melbourne (1971), p. 13, No. 14.

Note.
The break on the foot was originally

strengthened by a metal plate inscribed:

“Jacobite glass in comtion ( = commotion ?) of
Rebelion 1715”.

11.
BRUCE OF COWDEN

(fig. 5, a)

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem, with

small slender tear low down. H. 7in. Crown,

cipher with 8 in the lower part, “Amen”. Two-
verse anthem (“bless” for “bliss”).
Pedigree.
Family of Bruce of Cowden,

Clackmannanshire — Margaret Bruce ( = 4th
Earl of Airlie) — her son, the Hon. John Bruce

Ogilvy — his great-nephew, the Hon. Bruce
Ogilvy (sold Sotheby’s 15.2.1924, Lot 199) –

G.F. Berney — George H. Lorimer –
Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Lit.
Francis, p. 167, P1. LX, No. 351;

Connoisseur

(Sept. 1942), p. 49, No. VI.

12.

ATTWOOD
(fig. 2)

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, drawn stem with long

tapering tear H. 7%in. Crown, cipher with 8 in

lower part, and “Amen”. Two-verse anthem.
Broken during 1939-45 War.

Pedigree.
G.E. Attwood — Sold Puttick & Simpson

12.4.1912 (“property of a gentleman”) to Law

Foulsham & Cole — R. Drane (sold Sotheby’s

29.6.1916) — Wilfred Buckley — Victoria &

Albert Museum (Mus. No. C.564-1936).
Lit.
Hartshorne, p. 349; Risley (1920), pp. 276-7;

W. Buckley,
The Art of Glass,
London (1939), p.

280, No. 506;
Connoisseur
(Sept. 1942), p. 48, No.

III; V. and A.
Glass: a Handbook. . .by
W.B.

Honey, London (1946), p. 108; E.M. Elville,
The

Collector’s Dictionary of Glass,
London (1961), fig.

170.

Note.
There is no proven link between the

Attwood glass (Hartshorne, p.349) and that sold
in 1912, but the details (size and decoration)
agree. Hartshorne records the legend that it was
given by the Young Pretender to a Bond Street

silversmith called Collier in acknowledgment of

his entertaining him in London.

13.
DRUMMOND CASTLE

(figs. 5b, 10, 16a, 17a)

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem with

long tapering tear and folded foot. H. 7%in.
Crown, cipher with 8 in lower part, “Amen”.

Four-verse anthem and inscriptions: “To. His

Royal Highness Prince Henry Duke of Albany

and York”, “Tenth of June”, “XX December”

and “1749”.
Pedigree.
Earl of Ancaster (descendant of the Duke

of Perth, whose seat was Drummond Castle) –
G.F. Berney 1921 — George H. Lorimer –
Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Lit.
Bles (1926), pp. 90-93, Pls. 24-5; Fleming

(1938), Pl. XLIX;
Connoisseur

(Sept. 1942), pp.

47, 50, No. II.
Note.
10 June was the Old Pretender’s birthday,

20 December (31 December in the reformed

calendar) that of Prince Charles Edward.

14.
BAIRD OF LENNOXLOVE
(fig. 8f)

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem. H.
7in. Crown, cipher with 8 in lower part, and

“Amen”. Two-verse anthem.

Pedigree.
The Lords Blantyre, of Lennoxlove,

Haddington, and their successors the Bairds of
Newbyth — Robert Baird (sold Christie’s

18.12.1947, Lot. 113) — K.A. Alexander (now

on loan at V. and A. Museum).
Lit.
V. and A. Exh.

English Glass (1968),
Cat. No.

121.
Note.
Exhibited by the Baird family at the

Glasgow Exh. in 1911, and by Messrs. Arthur

Churchill at the Antiques Dealers’ Fair, 1948.
15.

BREADALBANE — I

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem with

large pear-shaped tear at top and smaller tear at
base. H. 8in. Crown, cipher with 8 in lower part,

and “Amen”. Four-verse anthem, two above

(“bless” for “bliss”) on the bowl and two in
smaller script lower down; also inscribed: “To

His Royal Highness Prince Henry Duke of

Albany and York”.
Pedigree.
Earls of Breadalbane at Taymouth Castle

(last Earl died 1863) — left (1911) by a
descendant to her godson, Colonel Morgan

Grenville, Wootton House, Wootton, Beds. –
Lady Ironside.

16.
BREADALBANE — H

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem with

long slender wavy tear. H. 6%in. Crown, cipher

with 8 in lower part, and “Amen”. Two-verse

anthem.
Pedigree.
As for Breadalbane I, but present owner

unknown.

17.
MORTON

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem with

tear, folded foot. H. 6%in. Crown, cipher and

“Amen”. Two-verse anthem.
Pedigree.
Mrs. M.H. Morton, allegedly in Morton

family possession “for as long as it can be

recalled” (sold Christie’s 11.12.1961, Lot 30) –

Gordon Russell, Sidney, Australia — National

Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

18.
CORNING

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl and plain drawn stem

enclosing elongated pear-shaped tear. H. 6%in.

Crown, cipher with 8 in lower part, “Amen”.
Two-verse anthem (apparently “bless” for

“bliss”).
Pedigree.
Steuben, New York — Corning Museum

of Glass (1950) (Mus. No. 50.2.112).
Note.
Exhibited at Royal Ontario Museum,

Toronto, May — Nov. 1950.

19.
ERSKINE OF CARDROSS — I

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem with

long irregular tear. H. 6%in. Crown, cipher with

8 in lower part, and “Amen”. Two-verse

anthem.
Pedigree.
Sir David Erskine of Cardross, a

descendant of Chancellor Erskine, whose forbears

were ardent Jacobites — probably G.F. Berney –
O.S.N. Turnbull (1921) — National Trust,

Mompesson House, Salisbury.

20.
ERSKINE OF CARDROSS — H

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem. H.
6%in. Crown, cipher with 8 in lower part,
“Amen”. Two-verse anthem starting “God Bliss

the King, I pray / God Save the King I pray”.

Pedigree.

Sir David Erskine of Cardross (see No.

19) — G.F. Berney (1921) — Sir Hugh Dawson

(1942 — sold Sotheby’s 21.10.1960, Lot 49) –

J.F. Wells — Glasgow Museums and Art
Galleries, Kelvingrove.
Note.
The connexion of this glass with Sir David

Erskine seems uncertain.

21.
AIRTH CASTLE

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, drawn stem with small

tear. H. Tin. Crown, cipher with small 8 in lower
part. Two-verse anthem (“bless” for “bliss”).

Bowl damaged.
Pedigree.
From Airth Castle, owned by the

Graham family since 1717 (sold Sotheby’s
17.4.1978, Lot 83.)

22.
FERGUSON
—
I

(fig. 12b)

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem and

folded foot. H. 7
1
/a in. Crown, cipher with 8

intertwined and `AMEN’. Two-verse anthem and

inscription: “To His Royal Highness Prince
Henry Duke of Albany and York”.
Pedigree.
Allegedly descended to the Ferguson

family by marriage with the Urquhart family –

Robert Ferguson (sold Sotheby’s 7.4.1933, Lot
76) — Cecil Higgins — Cecil Higgins Art

Gallery, Bedford (Mus. No. G.108).

Note.
The engraving on this glass is now widely

regarded as spurious (see No. 23, 38 and p. 16

here).

23.
FERGUSON
—

II
(figs. 12c, 16b, 17b)

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain stem enclosing

small pear-shaped tear, folded foot. H. 7%in.

Crown, cipher with large 8 intertwined, and
“Amen”. Four-verse anthem and inscriptions

“To His Royal Highness / PRINCE HENRY /

Duke of Albany & York” and “6th of March”

and “1725”.
Pedigree.
Allegedly descended to the Ferguson

family by marriage with the Urquhart family –
Robert Ferguson (sold Sotheby’s 12.3.1937, Lot

39) — Sir Harrison Hughes (sold Sotheby’s

24.6.1963, Lot 65) — Cinzano Glass Collection.
Lit. Cinzano Glass Diary (11.7 .1974),
ill. in Colour;

Peter Lazarus,
The Cinzano Glass Collection,

London (1980), fig. 101.
Note.
The engraving on this glass is now widely

regarded as spurious. (see Nos. 22, 38 and p. 17

here).

24.
GRAHAM
(figs. 12a, 13b, 14b, 15b)

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem,

plain foot. H. 7
1

/2in. Crown, cipher, with 8

intertwined. Four-verse anthem, two on bowl and
two on foot, with further inscriptions: “To His

Royal Highness the Duke. To the Increase of the
Royal Family” on bowl.
Pedigree.

Miss D. Graham, who told the purchaser

that she was “one of the Scottish Grahams and

that the glass had always been in her family who

were Jacobites” — Hankinson’s Auctioneers,

Bournemouth — Mrs. W.D. Dickson (1930) –

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (1945).

Note.
The engraving on this glass is now widely

regarded as spurious (see Nos. 22, 23, and p. 19

here).
Lit. Glass at the Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge

(1978), No. 264.

25.
BEVES

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, drawn stem with large

tear. H. 71/4in. Crown, cipher with 8 in lower

part, “Amen”. Four-verse anthem (“bless” for
“bliss”) with additional inscriptions: “To His
Royal Highness the Duke of Albany and York”

and “To The Increase of the Royal Familie”.

Pedigree.
Donald H. Beves, Cambridge — (1961)

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (sold Sotheby’s

11.5.1964, Lot 152) — ? (sold Sotheby’s
6.3.1984, Lot 161) — Victoria and Albert

Museum.
Lit.
“Cambridge Connoisseur”,
The Connoisseur

(June, 1960), p. 36, fig. 18.

GLASSES WITH AIR-TWIST STEMS
26.
RUSSELL
(fig. 4)

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, drawn stem with

single-series air-twist. H. 7in. Crown, cipher with
large 8 intertwined, and “Amen”. Two-verse

anthem (“bless” for “bliss”) and “To His Royal
Highness Prince Henry” “To the Increase of The
Royal Familie”. The last line of the 2nd verse

reads: “As Thou has done before”.
Pedigree.
“Traditionally said to have belonged to

Henry, Cardinal York” — A. J. Russell,
Edinburgh (d.1887) — the Misses Russell (sold

Christie’s, 16.6.1949), Lot 9) — Mr. C.A.
Hamilton, Barns (1950). This seems to be the

glass owned by Major Hamilton of Murrayfield

(sold to J. Gordon and Gordon, Edinburgh, 1953

?) — Walter F. Smith, Jnr., Trenton, U.S.A.

(sold Sotheby’s 4.12.1967, Lot 206) — Harvey’s
Wine Museum, Bristol.

Lit. Glass Notes,
9 (Dec. 1949), pp. 6-7;
Cat.

of an

Exhibition of Rare Scottish Antiquities
shown at 7

Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, 19.8 to 10.9.1950;

Glass Notes,
10 (Dec. 1950), p. 20.

Note.
Ill. in a notice of the Chelsea Fair as in the
possession of Messrs. J. Gordon and Gordon, in

Connoisseur
(Oct. 1953), p. 127, No. 5.

27.
OGILVY OF INSHEWAN

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl and drawn air-twist

stem. H. 6
7

/10 in. Crown, cipher, figure 8 and

“Amen”. Two-verse anthem on bowl, with

inscription “Prince Henry, Duke of York &

Albany”,; on the foot a hand pointing and the

third verse of the anthem (“God Bliss the Church
I pray”) and “God Bliss all Loyall Subjects.

Amen”.
Pedigree.
John Ogilvy of Inshewan (sold Sotheby’s

27.6.1924, Lot 39) — Mrs. Aspin.

28.
VAILLANT

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl and drawn air-twist

stem. H. 6V2in. Crown, cipher and presumably
“Amen”. Two-verse anthem with additional

inscriptions: “To His Royal Highness the Duke

And To The Increase of The Royal Family”,
and, on the foot, “A Bumper to the Noble and

True Patriot of his Countrey The Right Honle
George Earle Marshal etc. etc. Hereditary Earl

Marshal of Scotland.”
Pedigree.
Ann (d. 2.3.1800), daughter of Richard

Harcourt, who had “followed the fortunes of the

Stuarts into France” (sold by auction) — M. V-J.

Vaillant, Bologne (1897).

Lit.
V-J. Vaillant,
Notes Boulonnaises, Varietis, etc.

(1889), p. 51; Hartshorne, p. 348.

29.
KEITH-DOUGLAS
(fig. 8e)

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, drawn-stem with
single-series air-twist. H. 6%in: Crown, cipher

with 8 in the lower part, and “Amen”. Three-
verse anthem, the third on the foot, and
additional inscriptions: “Prince Henry Duke of

Albany and York” and “God Bless all Loyal
Subjects”. The foot is repaired with a silver
mount, two fragments apparently supplied from

another glass, one inscribed: “God bless all Loyal

Subjects”, beginning the fourth verse.
Pedigree.
George, 10th Earl Marischal — Bishop

Keith, Primate of Scotland — Mr. Stewart
Marischal Keith-Douglas (1897) — Cecil Davis

(1926) — Capt. W. Horridge (sold at Plaish Hall,

Cardington, Church Stretton, Salop. by Jackson
Stops & Staff, 30.11.1959, Lot 367) — Dr. Peter

Plesch (sold Sotheby’s 6.12.1971, Lot 159) –
K.A. Alexander (now on loan to V. and A.

Museum).

Lit.
Hartshorne (1897), p. 347; Derek C. Davis,

English and Irish Antique Glass,
London (1964), fig.

47; Peter H. Plesch, “English and Continental

Glass in the Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Peter H.

Plesch”,
JGS,
VII (1965), p. 81, Fig. 7.

30.
HOWARD
(fig. 5d)

Three-piece, round-funnel bowl, columnar

double-series air-twist stem with a multi-ply spiral
band enclosing a pair of spiral threads. H. 7%

(7 %) in. Crown, cipher with 8 and “Amen”
below. Two-verse anthem, the words “Send him

Victorious” repeated in error and “Happy and
Glorious” written in below; on the foot: “God
Bliss and Restore the Son of the Father we had

before”.
Pedigree.
T.N.S.M. Howard, C.D., D.S.O. (to

whom it allegedly descended from a Scottish
branch of the family: sold Sotheby’s April 1926)

— G.F. Berney — George H. Lorimer (1936) –

Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Lit. Wine
Trade Loan Exhibition (1933), No. 315

(b);
Connoisseur
(Sept. 1942), p. 50, No. VIII.

31. PEECH
(fig. 6)

Three-piece, trumpet-bowl, drawn stem with

single-series air-twist above a teared knop and

domed foot. H. 71/2 in. Crown, cipher with 8 in

the lower part. Two-verse anthem, with further

inscription: “To the Increase of the Royal
Family”.

Pedigree.
Henry Peech (sold Sotheby’s 19.3.1926,

Lot 30) — Hamilton Clements (before 1931) –

Sir Harrison Hughes (sold Sotheby’s 24.6.1963,
Lot 64). At one time with the firm of Law,

Foulsham & Cole; originally in possession of

Clarke family (W. Horridge).

Lit. Connoisseur
(Mar. 1920), p. XIII; Risley

(1920), p. 281; Bles (1926), p. 116, P1. 37, fig. 50;

Antique Collector
(17.10.1931), p. 587;

Connoisseur

(Sept. 1942), p. 50, No. VII; S. Crompton,
English Glass,
London (1967), Pls. 118-9.

32. MURRAY-THREIPLAND

Three-piece, trumpet-bowl, drawn stem with

single series air-twist above a teared knop and
domed foot. H. 7 1/2 in. Crown, cipher with large

8 in lower part, “Amen”. Two-verse anthem. A
triangular piece broken from bowl and replaced.
Pedigree.
Mr. P. Murray Threipland of Fingask

Castle, Aberdeenshire (1822) — Mr. W. Murray
Threipland (1897) — P.W. Murray Threipland,

FRGS, FSA (Scot.) — National Museum of

Antiquities, Edinburgh.

Lit.
R. Clark,

Account of the National Anthem,

(1822); Hartshorne (1897), p. 349.

C. GLASS WITH INCISED TWIST STEM
33. NEWTON OF BALLYMOTE (fig.
5, c)

Three-piece, round-funnel bowl, straight
“incised twist” stem. H. 6%in. Crown, cipher

with 8 in lower part and “Amen”. Two-verse

anthem (?). Chip on foot.
Pedigree.
Lady Newton of Newtown Park House,

Ballymote, Co. Sligo — Mrs. H.F. Thomas

(1927) — G.F. Berney (1930) — George H.
Lorimer (1934) — Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Lit. Connoisseur
(Sept. 1942), p. 50, No. IX.

D. GLASS WITH PEDESTAL STEM
34. HADDINGTON
(figs. 7, 8b)

Three-piece, round-funnel bowl, four-sided

shouldered stem with tear at base, folded foot.

Foot and bowl broken. H. 5in. Crown, cipher

with small 8 in lower part. Two-verse anthem

(“bless” for “bliss”), “Amen” with “1716” in
surrounding scroll work, “1745” after the second

verse.
Pedigree.
Bought at Haddington in 1876 –

National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh.

Lit.
Hartshorne, p. 349; H.J. Powell,
Glass
–
making

in England,
Cambridge (1923), p. 60, fig. 49.

E. NONDESCRIPT
35. SPOTTISWOODE

The late Capt. W. Horridge had notes of an
“Amen” glass belonging to a Mr. J. Herbert

Spottiswoode, but the only details surviving in the

correspondence (1946) with E. Barrington
Haynes are that the glass had a folded foot and
that the word “Bliss” occurred twice in the first

line of the anthem.

F.
“PSEUDO-AMEN” GLASSES

36. STEUART
(fig. 8a, g)

Two-piece, bell-bowl with solid base enclosing
tear, drawn straight stem, folded foot. H. 6%in.

Crown, cipher with 8 in lower part. Inscribed:

1.
Send Him Victorious Happy and Glorious

Soon to reign

Over Us

God Save

The King

Amen

2.
‘Prosperity to the Bank of Scotland”.

3.
(on foot) “A Bumper to the Memory of Mr.

David Drummond. 1743.”

Pedigree.
Descended in apparently unbroken line

in the Steuart family — Miss Sylvia Steuart –
National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh.
Lit. Glass Notes,
16 (Dec. 1956), pp. 24-5; Circle of

Glass Collectors, Commemorative Exh. 1937-62,

London (1962),
Cat.
No. 301.

37. GREGSON OF TILLIEFOUR

Two-piece, bell-bowl with solid base enclosing

small tear, drawn straight stem, folded foot. H.
9 1/2 in. Crown and cipher with 8 in lower part,

folded foot. Inscribed: “Send him soon home /

And that no Sooner / than I do Wish

Vive la Roy”
(sic)

Pedigree.
Major Gregson of Tilliefour,
Aberdeenshire (sold Christie’s July 1919) –

Henry Peech (sold Sotheby’s 19.3.1926, Lot 16)

— Hamilton Clements — Sir Harrison Hughes

(sold Sotheby’s 24.6.1963, Lot 63).

Lit.
Risley (1920), pp. 276-7; Bles (1926), Pl. 28.

38.
FERGUSON

Two-piece, bell-bowl with solid base enclosing

tear, drawn straight stem, folded foot. H. 7%in.

Crown and cipher with 8 in lower part. Inscribed:

“Caelum non / animum mutant
Qui trans / mare currunt”.

Pedigree.
Allegedly descended to the Ferguson

family by marriage with the Urquhart family –
Robert Urquhart (sold Sotheby’s 12.3.1937, Lot

39) — Cinzano Glass Collection.

Lit.
A. Churchill,

History in Glass,
London (1937),

p. 9, No. 31; P. Lazarus,
The Cinzano Glass Collec-

tion,
London (1980), fig. 88.

Note.
The engraving on this glass is now widely

regarded as spurious (see Nos. 22, 23 and p. 18

here).

39.
KER

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem with

long thin tear, and folded foot. H. 11%in.
Crown, cipher with 8 in lower part, “Amen”.
Inscription: “Send Him Victorious/Happy and

Glorious/Long to Reign Over Us/God Save/The

King”.
Pedigree.
Descended through John Archibald Ker

(1819-1915) from his grandfather James Ker

(1750-1819) of Blackshiells, to Brigadier T.F.K.
Howard — W.N.J. Howard (now on loan to

Victoria and Albert Museum).

40.
FRASER OF FORD

Two-piece, trumpet-bowl, plain drawn stem with

large irregular tapering tear, folded foot. H.
5%in. Crown, cipher with 8 in lower part.

Inscription: “Send Him Victorious / Happy and

Glorious / Soon to Reign over us / God Save /
The King”.

Pedigree.
According to family tradition, given by

the Dowager Duchess of Gordon (before 1760) to

William Fraser, solicitor and confidant of Lord
Lovat (executed 1747), and then passed down the

family to the present owners, Dr. and Mrs. H.
Mc. Giles.

THE ENGRAVING ON THE AMEN’ GLASSES

by Geoffrey Seddon

The ‘Amen’ glasses are, without question, the most

highly prized of all Jacobite glasses, even though there

are other Jacobite glasses which can lay claim to
greater rarity. They occupy this lofty position because

there is something quite unique about their whole

concept: the diamond point engraving; the verses of
the Jacobite hymn; the reversed cypher, referring
unashamedly to James VIII of Scotland; and the

romantic names like Lochiel and Traquair, which

couple these glasses with the very core of Jacobite
rebellion, seeming to make each one an instrument of

treason with its own particular place in the history of
the times.

All of which leads to the inevitable question: who

could have engraved these glasses and, since they are
unique in concept and design, could they all be the

work of one engraver? In order to try and answer these
questions the engravings have to be subjected to close-

up photography and examined in detail. I have
photographed the engravings on some 400 Jacobite

glasses and these have included 16 ‘Amen’ glasses,

which means they represent about 4% of the total of

those photographed. In addition we have also had

photographs of thirteen other glasses, seven of which

were in considerable detail and six which were clear
enough to make possible some assessment of the

writing (see Appendix).
The glasses vary considerably in the content of the

engraving. The verses of the Jacobite hymn vary, and
there are variations in the wording: for example,

“soon to reign” and “long to reign”. The spelling can

vary; there is the different spelling of “bless” and

“bliss”; then also, “hath done before”, “hast done

before”, or “has done before”. Again the quality of

the engraving varies; some being fairly crudely, others

quite finely, engraved. These differences may make it

seem unlikely that a single engraver was responsible,

but the glasses were probably produced over a period

of years and I hope to be able to show, by a series of
comparative photographs, that they were indeed the

work of one engraver who gradually improved the

quality of his work (fig. 8, a-j).

The dates on some of the glasses may be helpful in

assessing when the ‘Amen’ glasses were being

produced.
Fig. 8(g). The ‘1743’ on the foot of this glass is

incorporated into the scrollwork, indicating that it is

not a later addition by another engraver, so it is quite
likely that this is when the glass was engraved. Being

one of the more crudely engraved glasses this is
probably one of the engraver’s early attempts.
The broken Dunvegan glass, Figs. 2(a) & (b),

carries the dedication to ‘Donald MacLeod of

Gualtergil in the Isle of Skye. The faithful Palinurus.

Aet. 69. Anno 1747.’ The glass is in Dunvegan Castle
on the Isle of Skye together with a number of other

Jacobite relics. The Castle is the ancestral home of the
Chief of the Clan MacLeod but it is not certain how

the glass comes to be there, for during the ‘1745’

rebellion the MacLeods of Dunvegan were anti-

Jacobite. This glass refers to a MacLeod from another

part of Skye: Donald MacLeod of Gualtergil, the old

boatman who, scorning the reward on the Prince’s

head, risked his life to guide and protect Charles
Edward as he tried to evade the Government frigates

which were searching for him. Hence the reference to
`The faithful Palinurus’ — the steersman of Latin

mythology.
The inscription on the foot, which fortunately

remains intact, is the most interesting part of this
glass. After Charles had made his escape to France the

old boatman was given a silver snuff box by John

Walkinshaw. He had served the Old Pretender,

James, and was the father of Clementina Walkinshaw,
the girl who was to become Charles’s mistress and give

him his only child, a daughter, Charlotte. The snuff

box is recorded as having exactly the same inscription

as the foot of the ‘Amen’ glass except that the date was

1746 and the age of Donald MacLeod correspondingly
68. It has been inferred from this that John

Walkinshaw also gave Donald MacLeod the ‘Amen’

glass but this does not necessarily follow; one

expression of appreciation by John Walkinshaw seems

more appropriate, and the inscription on the glass

could well have been copied from the snuff box a year

later. Nevertheless, it does seem to emphasise that the

date on the glass is genuine. The old boatman died in

poverty in 1749 at the age of 72.
Our diamond point engraver was still learning, for

although the engraving on the flat foot of the glass is

good that on the more difficult curved bowl is still

fairly crude (fig. 8, c); and this is the year after the

Jacobite defeat at Culloden Moor. So, it may be that
the majority of the ‘Amen’ glasses were engraved after

the ’45 Rebellion.

The significance of the date ‘1749’ on the

Drummond Castle ‘Amen’ glass (fig. 10) remains

obscure. However, there are two authenticated glasses
with the date 1749, a fact which tends to indicate that
the date is not a later addition. This is the latest date

appearing on any ‘Amen’ glass, and both the glasses

with the date 1749 carry a dedication to Charles’s
younger brother Prince Henry. Indeed several of the
`Amen’ glasses have a dedication to Prince Henry and

it may be significant that all these glasses, judging by
the quality of the engraving, appear to be later glasses;

certainly better quality engraving than on the 1747
Dunvegan glass. This is interesting because Prince

Henry became a Cardinal in the Church of Rome in

1747 and it is frequently maintained that after this he

was ignored by the Jacobites. Henry’s becoming a

Cardinal, clearly, did not deprive him of all Jacobite

support; a point I made in the last paper I read to the
Glass Circle
(Glass Circle
3) when I pleaded for a review

of the present theory concerning the rose and buds on

Jacobite glasses; which theory depends entirely upon

the concept that Prince Henry was totally excluded by

the Jacobites after becoming a Cardinal. However,

whatever the significance of the date 1749, it seems

reasonable to suppose that the ‘Amen’ glasses were
probably engraved between 1740 and 1750.

We have found no convincing evidence to support

the popular belief that the ‘Amen’ glasses were the

work of a silver engraver. One theory related to silver

engraving, concerns a plain drawn-stem glass with a

silver foot (fig. 11a). Formerly in the Horridge
collection it has changed hands at auction realising

high figures on the strength of the legend which

surrounds it. It is said to have been used by Prince

Charles to drink his father’s health, and to have been
broken, as was the custom, so that it could never again

be used to drink another toast. The foot has been
replaced in silver, and where the silver joins the stem

the scallop edge is engraved ‘God Blis King James The

Eight’ (fig. 11b). Although the silver has never been

assayed there is a maker’s mark, ‘PM’ (fig. 11c) on the
underside of the foot. This maker’s mark is not

recorded but it has been suggested that it might be the

work of a Stirling goldsmith by the name of Patrick

Murray, a Jacobite who was hanged for treason in

1746. It has further been suggested that Patrick
Murray might also have been responsible for the
`Amen’ glasses, because of some similarity in the

writing. However the writing does not match that on
the ‘Amen’ glasses and one might also be tempted to

enquire how Patrick Murray could have been

engraving ‘Amen’ glasses in 1749 if he had been
hanged in 1746. Since it has never been assayed there
is no date mark, so it remains a mystery — a glass

quite probably of Jacobite significance, and an
intriguing story, but I doubt if it has any connection
with the ‘Amen’ glasses. And even if the silversmith is
identified it does not mean that he did the silver

engraving, for this craft was, and indeed still is,

separate from that of silversmithing. Certainly the

crown and reversed cypher on the ‘Amen’ glasses

resemble the type of design used by silver engravers,

but this kind of design was also used in calligraphy.

The tools used by the silver engraver to work the

surface of metal have little to do with the art of

diamond point engraving, whereas one would imagine
that a calligrapher would have been able to adapt his

skill much more readily. The scrollwork is very

reminiscent of the calligrapher’s art and it seems much

more likely that the ‘Amen’ engraver had his training

in this discipline.
With ‘Amen’ glasses, as with other Jacobite

engravings, it is not long before one comes up against
the vexed question of possible fake engraving and

there have been rumours for many years of suspect
`Amen’ engravings on genuine 18th century glasses.

The text-books warn readers to beware with all types
of Jacobite glass, but are unable to say how the real

Jacobite engraving is to be distinguished, be it
diamond point or wheel engraved. The close-up
photography has thrown some light on this aspect of

the subject and, because the ‘Amen’ glasses are such

important historical relics, we felt that it would be of

interest.
It started when Mr. Charleston came across a letter

written by Cecil Higgins to a colleague. In it he
referred to an ‘Amen’ glass in his collection. We had

no knowledge of such a glass in the Cecil Higgins

Collection; so I wrote to our member, Miss Grubert,
the curator of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery in

Bedford, and we were surprised to learn that Cecil

Higgins had indeed acquired an ‘Amen’ glass in 1933.

The glass had been bought at auction as being the

property of a Mr. Ferguson. Enquiries revealed that

Mr. Ferguson, when he brought the glass to be sold,

knew nothing of its previous history and said that it

had come from his wife’s side of the family — her
maiden name being Urquhart. After Cecil Higgins
had acquired the glass a number of experts, notably

Honey, Rackham, Barrington Haynes and Horridge,

examined it and, in the absence of a reliable
provenance, expressed doubts. Horridge and

Barrington Haynes even tried to seek out Mr.
Ferguson to get more information but failed to

establish contact. After the death of Cecil Higgins his

collection was displayed in the Art Gallery which bears

his name; this was opened in 1949. The ‘Amen’ glass

was examined again by our own Mr. Kiddell and, on
his advice, it was withdrawn from public view. It has

been held in store at the Gallery ever since and Miss

Grubert very kindly permitted me to photograph this
interesting glass.

On studying the close-up photographs of the Cecil

Higgins glass (fig. 12b) and comparing them with

those of the other ‘Amen’ glasses one begins to feel

uneasy and wonder if perhaps there was more than
one ‘Amen’ engraver after all. The writing, while

closely resembling that on the other ‘Amen’ glasses,

nevertheless seems to be by a different hand.
Furthermore, it is exactly the same as the writing on

two other `Amen’ glasses that I had photographed and

which had already given me this same feeling of
unease — namely, the ‘Amen’ glass in the Fitzwilliam

Museum in Cambridge (fig. 12a), and that at present

in the Cinzano Collection (fig. 12c). The Cecil

Higgins glass seems to combine features of both these

glasses.
If we accept that these three glasses are by the same

hand, could there possibly have been another ‘Amen’

engraver contemporary with the engraver of the

majority of the glasses? The superficial resemblance in

the writing of the one group to that of the other is very

close; so, if there had been another contemporary 18th

century engraver, it would need to have been someone
who not only copied the idea and style of the ‘Amen’

glasses but actually attempted to copy every stroke and

flourish of the other engraver’s writing. This must

surely be difficult to do and one wonders why it would

have been necessary for a contemporary engraver to
go to this trouble. Another odd feature is that when

attempting to trace the history of these glasses there is

a lack of any provenance going back earlier than the

1930s. The Fitzwilliam glass was given to the Museum

in 1945 by Frances Dickson, one of the early members

of our Circle. The Cinzano glass was formerly in the

Harrison Hughes collection when it was sold at
auction in 1963. It appeared again at auction in 1972

and was purchased for Cinzano. Of course new

discoveries are constantly being made. When
Hartshorne published his book in 1897 he knew of
only six ‘Amen’ glasses; now we know of about forty.

The mass media, and improved communications

generally, help to unearth hitherto unknown art
treasures of all kinds. But the fact that something like

an ‘Amen’ glass is newly discovered is no excuse for
the lack of a provenance. Someone may suddenly find

that they possess a valuable historical relic but they can

usually recall how long it has been in the family, and

a few enquiries amongst relatives will often trace it

back over several generations. After all, the reason for

its having remained undiscovered for so long is usually
that it has been unrecognised amongst the possessions

of one family. The Russell ‘Amen’ glass was ‘dis-
covered’ in 1949 but it has a provenance going back

to at least 1887.

The implications were obviously quite serious, so I

enlisted the assistance of Dr. Richard Totty, who is a

Home Office graphologist and a scientific officer with
the West Midlands Forensic Science Laboratory. At

that time I had detailed photographs of thirteen

`Amen’ glasses which I left with Dr. Totty, and he
made a close study of them over a period of two

months. He made precise comparisons of individual

letters, relative heights of letters, spacings between

letters and words, and the overall fluency of the

writing. He also studied the scrollwork, crowns, and

cyphers and finally sent me a comprehensive four-page
report on his findings, which are summarised briefly

by saying that, of the thirteen glasses, he confirmed

that ten were definitely the work of the same hand
gradually improving over a period of time; this I tried

to illustrate earlier. The three remaining glasses: the
Fitzwilliam, the Cecil Higgins, and the Cinzano

glasses, he was quite certain, were the work of one

hand but were copies. The engraving on these three

glasses resembled that on the other ten too closely for

them to be considered the work of a completely

independent engraver.
Now, I said at the beginning that the ‘Amen’ glasses

vary considerably in the content of the engraving.

There is, however, one notable exception and this is
the very close resemblance between the Fitzwilliam

`Amen’ glass and the Fisher of Ham Common glass in

the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (figs. 13a, b, 14a,

b). Looking at these two glasses there is the obvious
superficial resemblance in the writing, but on closer

study detailed differences become apparent. There is

not the same fluency or the same expert utilisation of

the available space. The writing on the Fitzwilliam

glass is more faltering in character and there are small

but significant differences in many of the letters and

also the scrollwork.

In the same way the Cinzano glass bears a close

resemblance to the Drummond Castle ‘Amen’ glass,

which I have not photographed personally because it

is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but which is

sufficiently well illustrated in Joseph Bles’s book to be
able to make a comparison. Like the Fitzwilliam glass

and the Cecil Higgins glass the writing on the Cinzano

glass shows the same fundamental differences from the

writing on the other ‘Amen’ glasses.
To summarise: we have three ‘Amen’ glasses which

have been shown graphologically to be by the same
engraver and to be copies of other ‘Amen’ glasses. So

far as we can ascertain none of them has a provenance

prior to the 1930s and for this reason one of them, the

Cecil Higgins glass, clearly aroused the suspicions of
the experts at the time. It is still possible that these
glasses could be the work of a contemporary 18th

century engraver but there must be an increasing

sense of unease and a growing suspicion that they
could be modern copies.

Let us imagine that someone, possessing some

calligraphic skill, wanted to copy an ‘Amen’ glass

today. How could it be done? It would be necessary to

have actual possession of an ‘Amen’ glass for a period

of time or, failing that, some close-up photographs.

The writing would need to be carefully examined,

probably with the aid of a magnifying glass. Dr.

Totty, the police graphologist, believed the
resemblance between the Fitzwilliam glass and the

Fisher of Ham Common glass on the one hand, and

the Cinzano glass and the Drummond Castle glass on

the other, was so close that whoever copied them must

have actually had possession of the Fisher of Ham

Common glass and the Drummond Castle at the time.

To me this seemed unlikely for two reasons. In the first

place it implies some complicity on the part of not just

one but two owners of the glasses and, secondly, there
are certain rather unusual detailed differences between

the copies and the originals which I will come to in a

moment.

The only other way such accurate copies could be

made is from detailed illustrations. The Cecil Higgins
glass came on to the market in 1933 and then, as now,

there was only one book with any really detailed

illustrations. That book is, of course, the one already
referred to: Joseph Bles’s book
Rare English Glasses of

the 17th and 18th Centuries.
This was published in 1926

by the firm of Geoffrey Bles, which had been

established in 1923, Geoffrey Bles the publisher being
the son of Joseph Bles the author. There are three

`Amen’ glasses illustrated in this book; two of them in

considerable detail, namely — and I think

significantly — the Drummond Castle glass, which
when Bles wrote his book was in the Berney

Collection, and the Fisher of Ham Common glass,

which at that time was in the author’s personal
collection.

Of course the fact that these two glasses are

illustrated in detail in Bles’s book proves nothing, but

I said that there are some strange differences between
the copies and the original glasses. If we consider, first

of all, the Fitzwilliam glass and the Fisher of Ham

Common glass there is one particular difference

between these two glasses which is very odd if one glass
is supposed to be a direct copy of the other. Two verses

of the Jacobite hymn are on the foot of each glass and
are engraved, in the case of the Fisher of Ham

Common glass, on the
top

of the foot (fig. 15a), as is

usual with all the ‘Amen’ glasses which have writing

on the foot; but, with the Fitzwilliam glass, the verses,

although exactly the same are written on the
underside

of the foot (fig. 15b). This does not occur on any other

`Amen’ glass. So why engrave in this way? Well, in

Bles there is a peculiar photograph which offers an

explanation (fig. 15c). This is Bles’s illustration of the

foot of the Fisher of Ham Common ‘Amen’ glass.
Now, remembering that the engraving is on the
top
of

the foot, this photograph does not make sense; because

with the bowl of the glass in the way it is quite
impossible to get a single vertical view of the whole of

the top of the foot, and this photograph clearly shows

the foot of the glass seen from below. I think the

explanation is this: to cover all of the engraving on the
top of the foot Bles would have needed three separate

illustrations so, in order to economise, he has

employed a little trick photography. He has

photographed the foot of the glass from below, that is,

showing the writing back to front, which he has then

corrected by reversing the negative when printing.

The result is a photograph of the foot of the glass, seen
from below, but with the writing appearing the right

way round. I believe that whoever copied the Fisher of

Ham Common ‘Amen’ glass did so without ever

having seen the actual glass and, unwittingly, copied

this photograph putting the engraving on to the

underside of the foot of the Fitzwilliam glass. To my
mind this excludes the possibility of any 18th century

engraver and indicates, beyond any reasonable doubt,

that Bles’s book was the source of inspiration for these

copies, dating them as being some time after 1926,

when the book was published.
When we come to consider the Drummond Castle

glass and the Cinzano glass (figs, 16a, b), the plot

thickens. The Cinzano glass is certainly the best of the

three copies but, although the writing on the glass is

painstakingly copied, the engraver was not confident

enough to do the complicated scrollwork, so the same

scrollwork as on the Fitzwilliam glass is repeated. The

crown and the large ‘8’ in the cypher are the same as

on the Fisher of Ham Common glass, whereas the
Drummond Castle glass has the familiar crown and

small ‘8’. The small ‘8’ must surely be easier to copy

than the large ‘8’ woven into the cypher; but, in the

text of Bles’s book, there is clear reference to the fact

that the large ‘8’ is ‘an extremely rare variation’ and
it is possible that this may be the reason that it was

used. The Fisher of Ham Common glass and the
Russell glass are the only authenticated ‘Amen’ glasses

known with the large ‘8’ in the cypher, but the large
`8′ is used on all three of the suspect glasses. The

Cinzano glass also carries a different date — 6th
March 1725 — this being the birth date of Prince

Henry, whereas the Drummond Castle glass is one of

the two glasses with the date 1749.

There is yet another strange fact which requires an

explanation. There is a part of the Drummond Castle
glass which is not illustrated in Bles at all. This is the
reverse of the glass showing the dedication to Prince

Henry. I do not know of any book or any catalogue

which has an illustration of this part of the Drummond

Castle glass — that is, an illustration of any kind, let

alone one that is sufficiently detailed to use for
copying. So, if the engraver was working from the

book, how was this particular part of the glass copied?

Was it just made up from the text in the book? I wrote
to Philadelphia and they very kindly sent me a close-

up photograph of this portion of the Drummond

Castle glass (figs. 17a, b), and clearly the dedication to

Prince Henry is not made-up; the one is quite

definitely a copy of the other.

Now I think you will agree that there are some

strange inconsistencies. Here is someone who, when
copying one glass makes the elementary error of

engraving the underside of the foot when every other

similar ‘Amen’ glass is engraved on the top of the foot.

And yet, when copying another glass, appears to have

precise detailed knowledge of a little known part of

that glass.
The engraver would have needed more than a

casual glimpse of the Drummond Castle glass in order

to make such an accurate copy, and I think this raises

yet another possibility. We have seen how Bles, like

most authors I imagine, was obliged to economise on

his illustrations. It is a virtual certainty that when the
Drummond Castle glass, in the Berney Collection,

was photographed for the purpose of his book, it would
have been taken from every angle. I know, from my

own experience, that when you get an opportunity to
photograph an important glass you make sure you do

not miss any of it. Bles would then have had to select

the two or three photographs he wanted to use. There

would have been a number of close-up photographs of
the glass which were never used in the book, and it is
possible that if these are modern copies then the

engraver responsible might have been someone who
had access to these photographs; possibly someone

connected in some way with the production of this

book.

Had this engraver, instead of copying the writing on

the `Amen’ glasses stroke for stroke, used his

calligraphic skill to develop a different, individual,

writing style, we might have reached the conclusion
that there was more than one `Amen’ engraver.

Perhaps there was more than one; we will all have to

make up our own minds on this but I believe grave

doubts must exist.

APPENDIX

The ‘Amen’ Glasses

GLASSES PHOTOGRAPHED BY THE AUTHOR

1.
Keith Douglas

(Hand List No.29)

V. & A. Museum, London.

2.
Lennoxlove

(

14)

V. & A. Museum, London.

3.
Perry

(

Sotheby’s, London.

4.
Cinzano (Ferguson II)

(

23)

Photographed Sotheby’s, London.

5.
Fisher of Ham Common

(

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

6.
Fitzwilliam (Graham)

(

24)

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

7.
Dunvegan

(

Dunvegan Castle, Isle of Skye.

8.
Traquair

(

Traquair House, Nr. Peebles.

9.
Lochiel

(

Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh.

10.
Steuart

(

36)

National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh.

11.
Haddington

(

..
34)

National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh.

12.
Murray Threipland

(

32)

National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh.

13.
Cecil Higgins (Ferguson I)

(

22)

Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford.

14.
Turnbull (Erskine of Cardross)

(

19)

Mompesson House, Salisbury.

15.
Breadalbane I

(

..
15)

Private owner.

16.
Beves

(

25)

Sotheby’s, London.

OTHER GLASSES WITH DETAILED PHOTOGRAPHS

17.
Drummond Castle

(Hand List

18.
Newton of Ballymote

19.
Howard

20.
Bruce of Cowden

21.
Russell

22.
Peech-Clements

23.
Buckley (Attwood)

No.13)

Philadelphia Museum of Art, U.S.A.

. 33)

Philadelphia Museum of Art, U.S.A.

30)

Philadelphia Museum of Art, U.S.A.

11)

Philadelphia Museum of Art, U.S.A.

26)

Harvey’s Wine Museum, Bristol.

31)

12)

V. &

A. Museum, London.

OTHER GLASSES — PHOTOGRAPHS, ILLUSTRATIONS, ETC.

24.
Palmer Douglas

‘
(Hand List

25.
Risley

26.
Burn-Murdoch

27.
Mesham

28.
Amen Glass, (early, crude engraving)

29.
Amen Glass, ‘Property of a Gentleman’!

No.8)

Metropolitan Museum, New York.

.10)

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Coming Museum of Glass.

Figure 1. “Mesham” glass

(No. 6). Corning Museum

of Glass.

Figure 2. “Attwood” glass
(No. 12). Victoria and

Albert Museum, Crown
Copyright.

Figure 3. “Lochiel” glass

(No. 9). Royal Scottish
Museum, Crown Copyright.

Figure 4. “Russell” glass
(No. 26). Harvey’s Wine
Museum, Bristol.

Figure 5, a. “Bruce of Cowden” glass (No. 11). b. “Drummond Castle” glass (No. 13). c. “Newton of Ballymote” glass

(No. 33). d. “Howard” glass (No. 30). Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Figure 6. “Peech” glass

(No. 31). Present owner
unknown.

Figure 7. “Haddington”

glass (No. 34). National

Museum of Antiquities,
Edinburgh.

Crown Copyright.

22
(c) Dunvegan.

(b) Haddington.

(e) Keith-Douglas.
(1) Lennoxlove.

0) Traquair.

Figure 8, a-j. A selection of the slides shown to illustrate a few of the interconnecting

features in the writing on some of the ‘Amen’ glasses.

(a) ,S’Icaral.

(d) Fisher of Ham.
(0 ,Slcuart.

(h) Lot
–
1114

Figure 11 (a)

(c
)

Figure 9 (b) Detail of 9 (a)

Figure 9 (a) Dunvegan.
Figure 10 Drummond Castle.

(b)

Figure 11 (a) Glass with silver foot. Ex-Horridge
Coll., sold Sotheby’s 12.7.1976, Lot 95: (b)

Detail of foot: (c) maker’s mark.

(b) Cecil Higgins (Ferguson I).

Graham

Figure 12 (a) Fitzwilliam

..44•Pr —

1331. e

Ja use

c
7

411
.041101.

2;4
6

Figure 13 (a) Fisher of Ham Common.
(b) Fitzwilliam (Graham).

•

tg • .

n
Irgrfr
ai
rri

te4A umv
– •

ope4 440

;..1044

4..

• 4p 4.
…A

I
an.

.011P

F/At
nth
it 0

,
0

frac
–
tornAnce of4a

(b) Fitzwilliam (Graham).

Figure 14.

(a) Fisher of Ham Common.

(b) Fitzwilliam (Graham).

figui

(a) Fisher of Ham Common.

AN.

.
•Ie

011…..,•…
6
.1r

tn.d. Jaw i;”
0
/4

3
” 4tfrv„

l~rxt?I “#;-;),t, Aosu.74
,

119
.,

at:94t

e.714.
/4

-.gar

Figure 16.

(a) Drummond Ca. lie.
(b) Cinzano (Ferguson II).

Figure 17.

(a) Drummond Castle.

(b) Cinzano (Ferguson II).

GLASSES FOR THE DESSERT I INTRODUCTORY

by R.J. Charleston

A Paper read to the Circle on 17 April, 1980

When the Earl of Hertford entertained Queen
Elizabeth in 1591, the dessert was carried out of the

gallery in his house into the garden by two hundred

gentlemen, and there were a thousand dishes, all of

glass or silver.’ On less spectacular occasions in

Tudor and Stuart times, this dessert, which was then
more usually called a “banquet”, was often eaten in

special pavilions made for the purpose, sometimes on
the roof of the house, sometimes in the garden. Like

the “banquet” itself, which was a course of

sweetmeats into which a high measure of invention

was imported, these “banquetting houses” were of a
fanciful character. One projected for Richard Carew

in 1570 was to be built on an island in his estate. The

island was square with round projections at the

corners, and the banqueting house was to have the
same ground-plan, but containing a round room

within the square: above this was a round turret

enclosing a square room. This sort of conceit was part
of the character of the dessert, which was originally a

spread of sweetmeats and fruit to be consumed while

the tables in the medieval hall were being cleared
ready for after-dinner activities, a process called

“voiding”.
2
This detached quality of the dessert,

together with its propensity to move outdoors, will be
touched on later, but to gratify the more specialized

point of view of those interested primarily in glass of

a later period, we must move indoors and consider the
meals of which the dessert was an integral but

nevertheless somewhat independent part.
The system of arranging dinners and suppers in the

18th century was both formal and yet flexible, as such

systems have almost always been throughout history.
Its framework was an arrangement of courses, the

main sub-divisions, and “removes”. Dr. Johnson’s
Dictionary
(1755) gives these definitions: “Remove. A

dish to be changed while the rest of the course

remains”; “Course. Number of dishes set on at once

upon the table”. Normally, there was a central axis to

the table-arrangement, along which were ranged the

main dishes and, in the mid-point, a static and mainly

decorative centrepiece
(surtout)
which remained in

place throughout the main courses. The main dishes

on the central axis were referred to as “dormants”,

since they, as it were, slept in place throughout the
course. Mrs. Papendiek, wife of a Court official of

George III, wrote in her diary for 1783:
3
“After soup

and fish, there was a round of beef at the top, a roast
goose at the bottom, at the sides a leg of lamb, boiled,

and a loin, fried, and four appropriate vegetables, all
put on the table at once . . .. These viands being

removed, in their place came two gooseberry pies, at

the top and bottom, baked and boiled custard at each

side, Swiss and other cheese, radishes and butter.”

Here the only “dormant” would presumably have

been the centrepiece, but this was a very simple dinner

for ten people, contrasting forcibly with the banquet of

1731 described below.
The dessert lay outside the dinner proper, although

it was an essential accompaniment. The word
“dessert” itself comes from the French “desservir”,

meaning to clear the table, a concept which continues

the idea of “voiding” current in Elizabethan times
and later. It was a course consisting mainly of fruit and

sweetmeats, but its importance lay almost as much in
its decorative appearance as in the nature of the food-

stuffs. W. King in his book entitled
Cookery. . .

(published 1708) emphasises this in saying ” ‘Tis the

dessert that graces all the feast….” The previous
course having been “voided”, the table-cloth (by now
no doubt considerably stained) was drawn, revealing a

clean cloth below (sometimes protected by a leather

draw-cloth below the top cloth). The dessert was then

set on. It follows that its often elaborate layout had to

be prepared behind the scenes, and there was a
premium on speed in setting out the dessert on the

cleared table. M. Massialot, the French chef whose

book was translated into English and published in

1702 as
The Court and Country Cook,
describes “A

desert, for an Oval Table of Twelve Coverings”,

which consists of a “middle board” in the form of a
hexagon, having upon it a “large Pyramid of Fruit

with China-dishes round about”, these also apparently

laden with fruits and probably also sweetmeats.

Round this central board, in the “outworks” were
baskets and dishes arranged in formal patterns — the

“Club-figures at the two Ends, are for iced Waters,
the Round ones adjoyning, for
Compotes;
and the Oval

on both Sides, serve each to hold a couple of
China-

dishes, for two small Pyramids .. ..” The central tray-
like
surtout

could be of “pieces fashioned together” so

that the dessert could be “readily serv’d up to Table,

all at once, without any manner of trouble or

impediment”.
4
Many households had these ready-

made boards on hand against the time when they

would be needed. Thus, in the Dyrham inventory of

1710, among the “Japan ware” (i.e. lacquered items)

is “A Large Stand for Desert”.
Although Massialot, reflecting French late-17th

century taste, insists on
China

(porcelain), glass bowls

had been recommended for creams and the like by Sir

Theodore Mayerne as early as the mid-17th century,

and in 1678 Robert May specified “little round jelly
glasses” for creams; while in 1709 T. Hall directed

that “limon-creams” should be put in “small thin

cream bowls or glasses”.
5

Massialot’s layout was a relatively unsophisticated

affair. Already in medieval times, however, banquets
in Germany had been made the occasion for the

representation on the table of mythological, allegorical

and other scenes, with human figures, animals, etc.

These were originally made in wax or in confectioner’s

sugar and tragacanth. The custom grew enormously
in scope in the Baroque period.
8
Inevitably, the

custom came to England in due course. Lord Hervey
wrote to Stephen Fox on 26 October, 1731:
7

“I was

on Sunday in town at a vast feast made by Kinski
(Minister of the Emperor) in honour of the day,

which, it seems, belongs to the Saint whose name the
Emperor bears. We were 26 at table, 14 foreigners and

12 English. We dined at a long table with 38 dishes at

a course, 12 removes, 2 courses, and a dessert of

arches, pyramids, giants, beasts, trophies, eagles, etc.

of barley sugar and sugar-plums, painted of different
colours, and raised to such a monstrous and ticklish
height that I believe it had been three weeks building

and was full half an hour in setting on. The dinner
lasted three hours and a half. The last two hours the

doors were thrown open to the street, and everybody

that had curiosity to see, and strength enough to push,

came into the room. I never was so hot, so sick, and

so tired in my life. The stink of all that dead flesh

before, and all that live flesh behind, made the stench
insupportable; . . . and in short altogether it was one of

the most expensive tawdry, ill-understood,

disagreeable German pieces of magnificence that ever

was seen . …” These confections were also
perpetrated by the English — Thomas Gray, writing

of the Coronation of George III in September 1761

recorded:
8
” . . a desert representing Parnassus with

abundance of figures of Muses, Arts, etc. designed by
Lord Talbot (Lord High Steward): this was so high,

that those at the end of the Hall could see neither K.

nor Queen at supper . ..” (cf. fig. 1).

These decorations, originally made by confectioners

in confectioners’ materials, were in due course made

in more durable substances. A German manual of

1785 runs: “At the table during great ceremonies the

dessert is very frequently accompanied by allegorical
and figural representations, in the proper

arrangement of which considerable knowledge of
History, Poetry and Mythology, likewise of

Architecture and Perspective, is called for. The easiest
representations at great desserts are pleasure-gardens,

with promenades, buildings, fountains,
parterres,

vases

and statues, of which last the porcelain factories make
the prettiest and most decorative pieces and
ensembles

imaginable, thus saving the confectioner much

work . ..”
8
Porcelain was the favoured material, but

glass was also used, as may be seen from the
illustrations to Gillier’s book for confectioners entitled

Le Cannameliste francais,
published in Nancy in 1751.’°

It is questionable how far these elaborate fashions

were followed in English dessert-arrangements in

which glass was predominantly used. A sort of
progression may perhaps be followed in the diagrams

to Charles Carter’s
The Compleat City and Country Cook,

London (1730). Plates 25-8 are devoted to tables of

seven dishes, four courses. Of these, the fourth —

“Desart” — is shown on an oval table with seven

dishes corresponding to those of the previous courses.

Down the centre are three dishes in a line, with “A
Pyramid of Sweetmeats” in the centre corresponding

to the”dormant” for the previous courses: above and

below this were ” Jelleys and sullabubs”. On one side

of this central line were a dish of “Lemon Cream and

Biskett” and another of `Peeches”, while on the other

side was a dish of “Nectrines and Apricocks’ and
another of “Pistachoe Cream and Biskett’, the dishes
of fruit and those of creams and biscuits being set

diagonally to each other, so that any guest was within

reasonable reach of a dish of fruit, a dish of cream and

biscuits, or jellies and syllabubs. This system is

amplified in a very much more crowded arrangement
for a “Grand Desert” in the same book, where instead

of seven dishes there are nine large and fourteen small

dishes taking up every square inch of the table-top (fig.
3). Down the centre again are three dishes — in the

centre, “A Grand Pyramid of Dry’ed Sweetmeats in

Porcelain”, with above and below it “A Pyramid of

Fruit of Sorts in Porcelain”. Round the central
pyramid are grouped six dishes (or are they salvers?),

four of which are prescribed for “Jelly of sorts”, and
the two largest on the main cross-axis, for
“Sweetmeats in Glasses”. Now on each of these

circular forms there is a central circle containing the

legends, surrounded by a number of smaller circles,

six on the jelly-stands and eight on the sweetmeat-

stands. It is difficult to resist the supposition that these
represent jelly-glasses and sweetmeat-glasses

respectively. From this mixed arrangement of

porcelain and glass we may turn to a layout in which

glass predominates, if indeed it has not driven the

porcelain completely from the field. It is given in

Hannah Glasse’s
Complete Confectioner,
published in

Dublin in 1762. Instead of being given in diagram

form, however, it is set out in words, but the

disposition of all the dishes is perfectly clear (fig. 4).

Down the central axis runs a series of five dishes, with
“Ice cream, different colours” and “Whip’d

syllabubs” at top and bottom, and “In the middle a

high pyramid of one salver above another, the bottom

one large, the next smaller, the top one less; these

salvers are to be fill’d with all kinds of wet and dry

sweet-meats in glass, baskets or little plates, colour’d

jellies, creams, &c. biscuits, crisp’d almonds and little

knickknacks and bottles of flowers prettily intermix’d,
the little top salver must have a large preserv’d Fruit

in it.” Three salvers to the pyramid was quite normal,

and the last phrase must surely mean “have a large

preserv’d Fruit on it (in some other type of
recipient)”: or perhaps the “top salver” here was a

sweetmeat (fig. 7). Down either side of the table were

other dishes, with “Clear jellies in glasses” and

“Lemon cream in glasses” at either end on opposite

sides. On either side of the central pyramid were

“Bloomage stuck with almonds” presumably in

dishes; and to either side of this made-up dish were

fruits and nuts of various kinds, their recipients not

specified.

In most works of the 17th and 18th centuries which

deal with the question of the dessert, emphasis is
placed on flowers as a desirable decoration. As early as

1670 John Evelyn records in his
Diary:
“Lord Stafford

rose from the table, in some disorder, because there

were roses stuck about the fruit when the dessert was

set on the table.'”‘

An advertisement of 1772 mentions “Glass Salvers

or Waiters chiefly from 9 to 13 inch, to be sold in

Pyramids or Single, with Orange or Top Glasses”,’
2

and in 1761 complete sets of salvers with top glasses

were even for sale in far-away Boston, Mass.
13
It will

be noticed that the salvers are also referred to as

“waiters”, and they were in fact certainly used for

servants to hand round drinks or sweets, as well as in
their role as trays for sweetmeats in the dessert. In
1730 Mr. Craig, silversmith in St. James’s Market,

was ordered to supply for the Duke of Chandos at

Cannons “a set of silver salvers, each to carry twelve

wine-glasses, not on one high foot but the “new

fashion ones of such a height from the table as will

allow room to put one’s fingers under to lift up” .
14

fact, the salver had been described in 1661 as ” .. a

new fashioned peece of wrought plate, broad and flat,

with a foot underneath, and is used in giving Beer, or

other liquid thing to save the Carpit or Cloathes from

drops.” Lady Grisell Baillie, a great standby in these
matters, records of a dinner for ten at Lord

Mountjoy’s in 1727, that at each end of the dessert
table there was a pair of silver salvers each holding

several matching cornered brimmed sweetmeat glasses

(i.e. with cut rims): so occasionally silver salvers took

the place of glass.
15

At this same dessert there was a

series of three-tier pyramids, the lowest salvers holding
glases of dry sweetmeats; the second tier holding four

fruit jellies, wet sweetmeats with covers and “betwixt
them high glasses”; the third tier having glasses of
white comfits round “a tall scalloped glass, corner

brim”. This seems to have been the normal pattern,

but there were inevitably variations. As early as 1746

the firm of Cookson, Jeffreys and Dixon, of

Newcastle-on-Tyne, supplied a dessert set consisting

of “four salvers, one top branch, five top sweetmeats,
and thirty-two jellies and custards”, for a total of

£2.2s.4d.’
6
It would appear that the “top branch”

was some sort of a lighting-fixture, and the

frontispiece to T. Hall’s
The Queen’s Royal Cookery,

published in 1709, shows a four-tier pyramid with

candle-holders apparently branching out at the level of

each tier, the whole surmounted apparently by a
holder for four candles: it is impossible to say from the

print of what material this pyramid was made.”.

Quite clearly, a glass dessert would look its best well-

lit, and if candle branches were not used, candlesticks

presumably were. Certainly this was the case with

porcelain services. In 1748 Sir Charles Hanbury-

Williams, our Ambassador to the Court of the Elector
of Saxony in Dresden, was given a service of Meissen

porcelain for a table of thirty covers, and this included

“8 branch candlesticks” and “24 single candlesticks”.

We may reasonably assume that a similar ratio
obtained on the dessert-table dressed with glass.
The salvers composing a pyramid normally stood on

a tall stem (figs. 6, 13), and these followed the
changing fashions of the times — balusters, light

balusters, shouldered stems, air-twists, opaque-twists

and even colour-twists, then back again to a plain

pedestal when cutting became established as the

fashionable mode of decoration (fig. 5). The

shouldered stem, however, was by far the longest-lived

form, surviving for the best part of three-quarters of a

century. The stemmed salver, however, was not the

only possibility. At Doddington Hall (near Lincoln)
the butler’s pantry contains a numer of glass pillars

with flat circular tops and bases, and these may be

compared with an illustration in the 1763 .price-list of
the N•bstetangen glasshouse, in Norway (fig. 8), where

similar pillars, but with ribbed shafts, are described as
“Conditorier” (“confectioners”) and appear in six

different heights from 1 1/2 to 5 “tommer” (inches).’
8

These were presumably made to support flat trays for

sweetmeats, much in the manner of the tiers of a

modern wedding-cake, and plain glass salvers are

known which correspond exactly to the tops of normal

footed salvers. A glass pillar (part of a set) has recently

entered the collections of the Victoria and Albert

Museum, this example having a central swelling knop

and enclosed air-bubbles.
What went on to these salvers is a question which I

shall leave to Mr. Udall to deal with in his paper (see

pp. 33ff below). I should perhaps, however, allude to

one form of dessert equipment which is somewhat out-

side his terms of reference. This is the sweetmeat-

stand, essentially a tall stem on a domed foot

supporting a sweetmeat glass above (fig. 10). It

borrows from the contemporary chandelier, however,

its notched arms, which spring from metal holders

exactly resembling those of a chandelier, and which

support a series of shallow dishes or baskets with

overarching glass or metal handles. These stands are
essentially a product of the cut-glass era of the third

quarter of the 18th century, although examples with

wrought decoration exist (fig. 9). An interesting
variant, where the stem of the stand rises from a cut

salver on a cut domed pedestal foot is to be seen on
William Parker’s trade-card in the British Museum

(fig. 11). It also shows well the form of the suspended
baskets, and demonstrates that the stand borrowed

from the chandelier its cut hanging drops as well as its
arms. G.B. Hughes in
English, Scottish and Irish Table

Glass
illustrates an example, which he calls a

sweetmeat
epergne,
and which is constructed on the

principle of a table candelabrum, with a heavy foot

supporting a cup from which branch notched arms on
two levels, supporting cut dishes where the drip-pans

would come on a candelabrum: in the centre rises a

shaft supporting an elaborately cut sweetmeat.° The

possible combinations and permutations of this idea

must have been innumerable. The first mention of a

cut
epergne
seems to be in Christopher Haedy’s

advertisement in the
Bath and Bristol Chronicle
for 30

November, 1769, which adds to a list of cut glass

published in the previous year the item “Laperne”.
2

Much later, in 1788, an issue of
The Times

mentions in

a London Sale “a Dessert Set of Cut Glass with lustres

and Epergnes”. This must have been something of
great splendour. Geoffrey Wills in his
English and Irish

Glass
illustrates a tall stand on which the lower range

of arms supports candle-holders, while the upper row

holds sweetmeat baskets.
21

Since the components of

these complex pieces are normally held together with

metal parts, it is difficult to be sure whether in some
instances a certain amount of replacement has not

taken place.
It may be imagined that desserts of this complexity

would take some time in the setting-on. Normally the

table-cloth would have to be drawn, revealing a second

clean cloth below. Elizabeth Raffald in her “directions
for a Grand Table” included in
The Experienced English

Housekeeper
(London, 1790) prescribes: “Before you

draw your cloth, have all your sweetmeats and fruit

dished up in China dishes or fruit baskets, and as
many dishes as you have in one course, so many

baskets or plates your desert must have.”
22
This,

however, was in the more austere atmosphere of the
end of the century, to which we shall return. Baskets

and plates are one thing, pyramids with jelly- and
syllabub-glasses another. It has already been said that

the “dessert” and its predecessor the “banquet”

could be independent small meals between times, and

there was therefore a long tradition of serving it
separately. The Countess of Pomfret, in Florence in

1740, wrote back home to her friend the Countess of

Hartford of “an elegant entertainment made by the

comtessa Galli”: “About forty ladies, and twice as
many gentlemen, were invited to breakfast at noon.

When we arrived, we were introduced into a very fine

apartment; where we found a band of music, and one

of the best singers assisting. This lasted about an hour.
We were then all desired to walk into a different suite

of rooms, in one of which was placed a vast table,
where chocolate, biscuits, cakes of all sorts, iced fruits,

sherbert, syllabubs, and many other similar refresh-
ments, were set forth in a most ornamental and

elegant manner. When every one had eaten enough

for an ordinary dinner, we were conducted into a great

hall; where the fiddles struck up, and dancing

began.”
23

I have not been able to find any direct

evidence that desserts of this sort in a room apart were
arranged as the last course of a dinner during the 18th

century, but this certainly seems to have been the case
in the early years of the 19th century, and may well

also have been so in the 18th. In 1826, when the Duke
of Saxe-Weimar Eisenbach visited New Orleans he

attended a dinner given “with the greatest display of
magnificence, after several courses large folding doors

opened and we beheld another dining room, in which
stood a table with the dessert .
.. ”
24

(cf. figs. 2, 12).

Just as in the 16th century “banquets’ had been

served outdoors, so in the 18th century desserts were
a form of entertainment enjoyed by those who visited

the Vauxhall and other public gardens. Even in

America there were “pleasure grounds”on the
Schuylkill River, about four miles from Philadelphia,

where there were “walks, groves, arbours and
parterres . . . judiciously disposed; the buildings very

elegant and convenient”, where a visitor in 1794 was

able to regale himself with syllabub and cake. In 1751
there was published in London a poem
The

Scribleriad. . .
by Richard Owen Cambridge, illustrated

in part with engravings by the Anglo-French engraver
L.P. Boitard.
25
One of these (fig. 14) depicts an

outdoor picnic of unusual elaboration, at which one of
the participants has just opened a walnut enclosing a

slip of paper:—

“As on the ground reclin’d Thaumastes lay,
Fill’d with the feasting of the genial day;

(Uncertain if some godhead sway’s his mind,
Or mov’d by chance) he broke the walnut’s rind:

Fear and amazement seiz’d his shuddering soul,

When for the nut, he found a scribbled scroll.
He trac’d the characters with secret dread;

Then thus aloud the mystick verses read.

IN LOVE THE VICTORS FROM THE VANQUISH’D
FLY,

THEY FLY THAT WOUND, AND THEY PURSUE
THAT DIE.”

It will be seen that a dessert has been faithfully

reproduced
al fresco,

with porcelain figures

surrounding a pyramid, itself set on a table-fountain of

a sort which is sometimes to be seen on glass-sellers’
trade-cards.
26
The water is to be seen spouting out at

the top, although it is a mystery whence it comes. On

the pyramid are jelly-glasses clearly to be seen. The
habit of having verses, like the mottoes out of crackers

but a good deal more sophisticated, was also an

accompaniment of the dessert of long standing, as was

appropriate to a meal described in 1615 as consisting
of “Banqueting stuffe and conceited dishes”.
27

Boswell, in Berlin in 1764, wrote home: ” … at ten a
most elegant supper. It was quite German, quite
hearty, and quite easy: for although this nation loves

form, custom has rendered it easy to them. We had

sugar figures of all sorts. A gentleman broke these

figures in a lady’s hand, and in the ruins was found a

device, one of which is curiously baked in each
figure . …
,228

It should be emphasised that there were almost

limitless possibilities of variation in the arranging of

the dessert. Hannah Glasse in her
Complete Confectioner,

writes: “Giving directions for a grand desert would be
needless, for those persons who give such grand

deserts, either keep a proper person, or have them of

a confectioner, who not only has every thing wanted,

but every ornament to adorn it with…though every
young lady ought to know both how to make all kinds

of confectionery and dress out a desert ..
”

29
There

were in fact firms which supplied all the necessary
accessories, such as John Bridge, who advertised in the

Daily Advertiser
for 1753: “Good Hartshorne Jellies, as

2s a Dozen: 6s a Dozen to be left for Glasses, which

will be returned when the Glasses are brought
home . …” Helen McKearin records a Wiclqw

Bonyod in Boston who, as early as 1731, sold “Fruits

in Preserves, jelly and surrups, Egg Cake, all sorts of
Maccarons, Marchpanes, Crisp Almonds; all sorts of

concerves . …”
29
(cf. fig. 15). With all these aids, the

main desideratum in the arranger of a dessert was

imagination and resourcefulness with the materials

available. As a writer in 1795 remarks: “as the setting

out a table is guided by Fancy and varied by Fashion
it is impossible to ascertain any particular mode: have
therefore omitted them. ”
30

Towards the end of the 18th century this exuberant

style of entertaining seems to give way to something
more sober. The Duc de Rochefoucauld, staying with
the Duke of Grafton at Euston in 1784, wrote in his

Mélanges sur l’Angleterre: ” . . . .
The courses are much

the same as in France except that the use of sauce is

unknown in the English kitchen and that one seldom

sees a
ragoiit.
All the dishes consist of various meats

either boiled or roasted and of joints weighing about
twenty or thirty pounds.

“After the sweets, you are given water in small

bowls of very clean glass in order to rinse out your

mouth — a custom which strikes me as extremely
unfortunate. The more fashionable folk do not rinse
out their mouths, but that seems to me even worse;

for, if you use the water to wash your hands, it
becomes dirty and quite disgusting. This ceremony

over, the cloth is removed and you behold the most
beautiful table that it is possible to see . … After the
removal of the cloth, the table is covered with all kinds

of wine .

On the middle of the table there is a small

quantity of fruit, a few biscuits (to stimulate thirst) and
some butter, for many English people take it at

dessert. ”
31

“After the sweets” seems a very cavalier phrase

with which to dismiss the sort of desserts with which
we have been dealing, and it seems certain that if a

spread of this sort had been laid before him, the Duc

de Rochefoucauld would have commented on it. It

seems likely, therefore, that it was a relatively simple
affair such as Mrs. Raffald describes in her book of

1790, already quoted. The simpler style of table-
dressing, consisting of candelabra and flowers in the
centre and place-settings round the edge, seems to

have been called at a later date “a la Russe”.
32

As for the finger-bowls, Sophie de la Roche, a

German lady visiting London in 1786, wrote home:
“The blue glass bowls used for rinsing hands and
mouth in at the end are quite delightful.”
33
It is easy

to see why these bowls began to be made in coloured
rather than crystal glass. As late as 1840
Miss Leslie’s

House Book,
published in Philadelphia, could

pronounce: “FINGER GLASSES. — These are

generally blue or green, and are filled with water and

set round the table, just before the cloth is remoyeci,
for the company to dip their fingers in…. The

disgusting European custom of taking a mouthful or
two of the water, and, after washing the mouth,

spitting it back again into the finger glass has not

become fashionable in America… most
gentlemen

preferring to pick their teeth and wash their mouths in

private.”

NOTES

1.
Mark Girouard,
Life in the English Country House,
New

Haven and London (1978), pp. 111, 323;
Our English

Home,
p. 153.

2.
Girouard,
op. cit.,
pp. 104-8.

3.
Court and Private Life in the Time of Queen Charlotte: being

the Journal of Mrs. Papendiek. .
(ed. by Mrs. Vernon

Delves Broughton). London (1887) I, p. 174.

4.
Helen McKearin, “Sweetmeats in Splendour: 18th

century desserts and their dressing out”,
Antiques

(March, 1955), p. 217, figs. 1-2.

5.
W.A. Thorpe,
A History of English and Irish Glass,

London (1929), p. 324, and McKearin,
/.c.,
p. 221.

6.
See Stefan Bursche,
Tafelzier des Barock,
Munich (1974),

passim.

7.
Lord Hervey and his Friends
(ed. The Earl of Ilchester),

London (1950), p. 106.

8.
The Letters of Thomas Gray

(ed. Duncan C. Tovey),

London (1913).

9.
R.J. Charleston, “A Background to the earliest English

Porcelain Figures”,
Antiques Review, I,
No. 8

(June/August 1951), p. 26.

10.
James Barrelet, La
Verrerie en France,
Paris (1953), pp.

115-6, Pl. LIV, a; Bursche,
op. cit.,
figs. 116-122.

11.
cit.
McKearin,

p. 218.

12.
cit.
G.B. Hughes,

English, Scottish and Irish Table Glass,

London (1956), p. 298.

13.
McKearin, /.c., p. 224.

14.
C.H. Collins Baker and Muriel I. Baker,
The Life and

Circumstances of James Brydges, First Duke of Chandos,

Oxford (1949), p. 371.

15.
Hughes,
op. cit.,
p.286.

16.
F. Buckley and T. Wake, “A Newcastle Glassmaker’s
Day Book”,

Proc. Soc. Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne,

IV,
4 (1929-30), pp. 310-11.

17.
McKearin,

/.c.,
fig. 3.

18.
Ada Buch Polak, “The `fp Olufsen Weyse’ Illustrated

Price-List of 18th century Norwegian Glass’,
Journal of

Glass Studies,
XI, pp. 86-104.

19.
op. cit.,
fig. 235.

20.
F. Buckley,
Old English Glass,
London (1925), pp. 107,

123 (item 17d).

21.
op. cit.
(London 1968), Chap. “Table Wares”, p. 10.

22.
cit.

McKearin,

/.c.,
p. 220.

23.
Correspondence between Frances, Countess of Hartford. . . and

Henrietta Louisa, Countess of Pomfret. . . ,
London (1805),

II, p. 105.

24.
McKearin,
/.c.,
p. 220.

25.
Geoffrey Wills, “Ceramic Causerie”,
Apollo (May,

1961), pp. 145-6.

26.
e.g. Colebron Hancock’s, which also shows dessert-

glasses set out on a diamond-shaped “middle board”.

27.
Gervase Markham,
The English Hus-wife
(1615),

cit.

McKearin,
/.c.,

p. 225.

28.
Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland,

1764

(ed.
F.A. Pottle), London (1953), p. 26.

29.
McKearin,

/.c.,
p. 223.

30.
Ibid.,
pp. 224-5.

31.
A Frenchman in England, 1784

(translated by S.C.

Roberts), Cambridge (1933), pp. 29-30.

32.
McKearin,
/.c.,
p. 225.

33.
Sophie in London

(tr. and ed. C. Williams), London

(1933), p. 207: on this topic, see further R.J.
Charleston,
English Glass. . .,
London (1984), pp.

172-4.

GLASSES FOR THE DESSERT II

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH JELLY AND

SYLLABUB GLASSES
by Tim Udall

Adapted from a Paper read to the Circle on 20 May, 1980

INTRODUCTION

Mr. Charleston in his Paper has given us some details

of the organisation and content of the dessert, and the

joint paper with Miss McKearin will describe some of
the earliest wet sweetmeats and the glasses in which

they were held. In this Paper I hope to show how, as

the eighteenth century progressed, the enormous

number of different sweetmeats that were available in

many different settings is reflected in the great variety

of glasses that were made to contain them.

DRY AND WET SWEETMEATS
Dry sweetmeats were such things as nuts, biscuits,

chocolates, sweets, small cakes and all manner of

dried, preserved and fresh fruits, all of which were
eaten with the fingers. Wet sweetmeats consisted of

drinks such as posset and syllabub, and an incredible
variety of confections such as jellies, creams, custards,

orgeat, flummeries, ice cream, etc., all of which were

eaten with a spoon.

SETTINGS
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the

dessert was often served in special rooms or pavilions,

or in the garden, while the dinner tables were being

cleared away ready for the evening activities. By the
eighteenth century it was usually an integral part of

the meal and was displayed in the centre of the table.

The main feature was often the glass pyramid, such as

the one in the Winterthur Museum, Delaware (fig. 6).

John Galt, writing at the beginning of the nineteenth

century, gives a very apt description of one that he saw

in a certain Mrs. Soorock’s cupboard: “The treasure

of the third and uppermost shelf was a stately

crystalline structure consisting of several stories of
syllabub glasses crowned by a large and lofty shallow

goblet usually occupied by a venerable preserved

orange.”
1

Parson James Woodforde has described a meal that

he had in Oxford, namely: “A large cod, a chine of
mutton, some soup, a chicken pye, puddings and

roots, etc., to be followed by pidgeon and asparagus,

a fillet of veal and mushrooms with high sauce with it,
roasted sweetbread, hot lobster, apricot tart, and in

the middle a pyramid of syllabub and jellies.”
2

This

was a fairly modest meal by the standards of the day
and the table layout would have been similar to that

shown by Patrick Lamb for “A Wedding Supper all

cold” in his
Royal Cookery
published in 1731 (fig. 20).

The celebrations after the wedding of Moses
Abrahams and Elizabeth Myers in London on 7th

October, 1812, are shown in the engraving by C.
Williams “The Wedding Dinner or Moses and the

Magistrate” (fig. 16), and in the centre of the table we

see a three-tier pyramid.
There were, of course, much more elaborate

banquets at which there would be a number of
pyramids on the table, and eighteenth century cookery
books sometimes contain plans of these vast meals.

Mr. Charleston has already quoted descriptions of

some of these banquets, but it is hard to find any

paintings or prints which show any details of the

glasses that were used on these occasions. The James

Gillray print “The Handwriting on the Wall”
3

shows

a rather rowdy banquet scene. The dessert is on the
table and a number of small jelly glasses are shown,

but they are all in very ordinary thick plain glass. This

is only a satirical picture of an imaginary continental

setting, so one cannot take it very seriously or expect
that the glasses will be depicted accurately. However,

at many big official dinners the dessert might well have
been supplied by outside caterers who would be likely

to use fairly ordinary glass. Often it was not advisable

to put out the finest glass; James II, when Duke of

York, visited Edinburgh in 1676 ‘and “the
Corporation invited him to an expensive banquet
which must have been a lively affair as 36 glass

trenchers, 16 glass plates, and 12 jelly glasses were

smashed”
.
4

The dessert was the last course of a meal, but at

home sweetmeats could be eaten at any time as a light
refreshment. The Gillray print “A Voluptuary under
the Horrors of Digestion” (fig. 13) shows a pyramid

of jelly glasses behind the Prince of Wales. One might

expect that he would have had rather finer glass than
is shown, but again one would not expect Gillray to

show the surroundings in accurate detail. The scene

does suggest, however, that a pyramid of sweetmeats

on a side table would have been quite a normal feature
in those days. There is a set of sweetmeat glasses on
the table in the picture “Lady Davers ill-treating

Pamela”, painted by Joseph Highmore about 1745

(fig. 17). Philippe Mercier in his eighteenth century

painting “The Sense of Taste” (fig. 18), of about

1740, shows an elegant household, and on the table

jelly or whip’t syllabub glasses are to be seen standing
on a stemmed silver salver, in the centre of which is a

covered sweetmeat glass with cut decoration. A rather
later and less elegant setting is shown by M. Egerton

in a caricature “A most delicious Ice”, dated 1825, in

which a gentleman is to be seen eating his ice cream
from a jelly glass, perhaps in his kitchen (fig. 21.).
Sweetmeats were often eaten outside the home. Mr.

Charleston has described the Boitard engraving (fig.
14) showing an elaborate picnic in which a decorated

pyramid of jelly glasses features, and he has told us

that sweetmeats were available in many public

gardens. They were also sold in confectioners’, coffee

houses, cafés, and in clubs; two famous confectioners’

shops — Weltje’s and Kelsey’s — stood side by side in
Pall Mall, as can be seen in an engraving, dated 1784,

“Master Billy’s return from Grocers’ Hall” by E.

Sauer.
5
Louis Weltje was a German cook and

confectioner who also owned the “Cocoa Nut” in St.

James’s St.; he was controller of kitchens and cellars
at Carlton House and a well known character. He is

portrayed in an engraving by Bretherton,
6

who also

has drawn Mrs. Weltje in their shop, where jelly
glasses and fruit can be seen.? James Gillray shows us

the inside of the adjoining shop in his engraving
“Hero’s recruiting at Kelsey’s” (fig. 19), and on the

counter we see a number of jelly glasses (compare fig.
22a). The serving woman holds a bobbin-stemmed

salver on which are more jelly glasses, and there are
others on the shelves behind — some balanced rather

precariously. The shelves also hold two “whip’t

syllabub” glasses, the pan-topped glasses on either

side of the covered jar (compare fig. 22b). The fellow
in the centre is eating from a jelly glass with a spoon.

The March 1784 edition of
The Wit’s Magasine

contains an illustration by S. Collings, “The

discomfitted Duellists”,
8
which shows the interior of a

coffee house. Above a serving counter is the

inscription “Orgeat, jellies etc”. Orgeat is a wet

sweetmeat made with almonds; so here is another

setting in which sweetmeats were available. J. J.

Chalon’s early nineteenth century painting “Le

Cafe” is a London scene in which a gentleman is to be
seen eating a rather sickly looking pink confection
from a jelly glass with a spoon.
9

All these paintings and prints show only very

ordinary plain jelly glasses and I have not found any picture which depicts these glasses with any form of

decoration or with handles. If any reader knows of

one, I should be most grateful for details. Trade cards

of the late eighteenth century (fig. 5), however, quite

often show sweetmeat glasses with cut decoration.
SURVIVING SETS

The Winterthur pyramid (fig. 6) has been

assembled with glasses from several sources, and
includes some tall slender inverted pedestal-stemmed

vases for flowers. These are very difficult to find, and
I know of only one other such vase, which is in the

Victoria and Albert Museum.
Few sets have survived to date intact. This is not

only because the glasses have been broken, but also
because if a set does come on the market these days,

the chances are that it will be bought by a dealer who

will sell off the glasses individually. Some years ago a

set of opaque-twist knopped jellies, and a pedestal-

stemmed sweetmeat glass with an opaque-twist knop

between the bowl and the stem was disposed of in this
way. The Winterthur Museum and the Museum of

London have sets with cut decoration. The Laing Art

Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, had a very fine

engraved set on an engraved salver (fig. 23). Each jelly
glass is engraved on the bowl with a different flower,

and each of these flowers appears on the salver.

Another unusual feature is that each jelly glass is

engraved under the foot with lattice loops. The

engraving is thought to be the work of one of the
Bohemian glass engravers working in London in the

middle of the eighteenth century. Sadly this set was

smashed by scaffolding contractors in 1950 and only
three jelly glasses survived intact; but it is now in the

process of being fully restored by infilling the missing

areas with perspex. The single-handled diamond-

moulded glass shown in fig. 26e is from a set of

thirteen glasses, eleven of which have single handles.

Most of the set is still in private hands, having been

passed down in the family.

GLASSES FOR DRY SWEETMEATS
Only very brief mention of these glasses will be

made, as our main concern is with wet sweetmeats.

The most important glasses are the stemmed sweet-
meat glasses, usually about 15 to 17cm high, which

stood at the top of the pyramid or in the centre of a

single salver (fig. 7). They are, therefore, sometimes
known as top glasses, and occur in all the stem forms

that are to be found in drinking glasses and with the

same types of decoration. They are often of high
quality, reflecting the esteem in which the dessert and

its glasses were held. They provide us with some of the

earliest examples of cut decoration to be found in

English glass, dating from 1720 onwards. The shorter

and rare “comfit” and “sucket” glasses are of similar

form, but only about 10cm high and often have

dentate rims.’°

EPERGNES
Mr. Charleston has mentioned sweetmeat stands

and epergnes in his Paper. Their baskets would have
been used for small dry sweetmeats and also for wet

sweetmeats. The early epergnes (fig. 9) are termed by

Therle Hughes “cream epergnes . . . bearing little glass

pails for variously flavoured creams”.” So the

epergne must be considered to be one of our series of

glasses for wet sweetmeats.

RECIPES
Before looking at the glasses in which they were

held, it is interesting to know something about these

wet sweetmeats. The household and cookery books of
the period make fascinating reading, for not only do

they give us recipes, but they also have sample menus,

plans of table settings, and sometimes instructions to

servants as to their duties, behaviour, and even their

sobriety. In some recipes there are references to the
type of glass which should be used for a particular

sweetmeat, and I find this especially in Mrs. Elizabeth
Raffald’s books. She seems to have been quite an

entrepreneur; she was housekeeper to Lady

Warburton and in 1769 started to write cookery
books, which ran to thirteen legal and twenty-six

pirated editions by 1806. Some recipes are rather

lengthy and not very easy to follow, so she started what

is reputed to have been the first school of cookery and

domestic science in England and she also opened a
registry office to supply the many servants required to
prepare her complicated recipes. She also brought up

a large family and must have been a busy woman.’
2

POSSET AND SYLLABUB
Miss McKearin, in the next Paper, explains in

detail the various sorts of posset and syllabub.
Essentially they were both made by adding spiced

cream or milk to some sort of liquor; posset being

served warm and syllabub cold. In Robert May’s
recipe for posset, boiling spiced cream and yolks ,of

eggs are added to hot sack “elevating your hand to

make it froth; which is the grace of your posset”.’
3

Mrs. Raffald, amongst others, instructs one “how to

make syllabub under the cow” which was a popular

way of making it if you happened to have a cow
handy. One takes sweetened beer, cyder, and nutmeg

“then milk as much milk from the cow as will make a

strong froth and the ale look clear” .’
4

Horace

Walpole wrote from Strawberry Hill in 1752: “We
have had a syllabub under the cow”.’
5

WHIP’T SYLLABUB
The more sophisticated whip’t syllabubs, which are

a refinement of the frothy variety referred to, seem to
have been popular in the eighteenth century. Mrs.
Raffald’s recipe instructs one to take one pint of

sweetened cream to which have been added lemon

juice and peel and “a glass of Madeira wine or French

brandy. Mill it to a froth with a chocolate mill and take

it off as it rises and lay it on a hair sieve Then fill your
posset glasses a little more than half full with white or

red wine. Then lay your froth, well drained on your
sieve, as high as you can but observe that it is well

drained or it will mix with your wine and spoil your

syllabubs.”
14
The sweetmeats shown in Philippe

Mercier’s painting “The Sense of Taste” (fig. 18)

may well be whip’t syllabubs as the bottom half of the

glasses holds alternately a red and a light yellow liquid,

presumably wine, and this is topped with whipped

cream.
The whole process of whipping cream for syllabub

was even mechanised. The Canon of Winchester

wrote in 1758: “Dr. Hayles hath actually published

what has been some time talked of, a tube of tin with
a box of the same at the lower end of it . . . that is full

of very small holes. This engine, with the help of a pair

of bellows, blows up cream into syllabub with great

expedition. This complex machine has already
procured the doctor the blessing of the housekeeper in

this palace, and of all such as she is in the present
generation (who know the time and labour required to

whip this sort of geer), and will cause his memory to

be held in reverence by all housekeepers in the genera-

tions that are yet to come.
„16

EVERLASTING SYLLABUBS
The ingredients are similar to those of a whip’t

syllabub but the whole mixture is beaten up together
and put into glasses. “This is the sort of whipt

syllabub that will keep a week or ten days and be all
the while as good as the first, and it is a very rich and

well tasted kind . ” ‘
7

JELLIES
These were made with gelatine derived from pigs’

trotters, calves’ feet, hartshorn (the antler of the deer),
and isinglass, which is made from the air bladders of

certain freshwater fish, notably the sturgeon. Jelly

making in the eighteenth century was not such a

simple process as it is today. Frederic Nutt, a royal
cook, has a recipe for “clear jelly”. A stock is made

up from isinglass, cinnamon, cloves, and coriander

seeds and this is heated. For every two quarts of stock,

put the juice and some of the peel of twelve lemons and

Seville oranges into a basin, together with “a bottle of

Lisbon wine and about half a pint of brandy; put all

this to the jelly stock, then break eighteen eggs (leaving
out twelve yolks), whites, shells and the six yolks, beat

up together and put them to the jelly stock; put sugar

sufficient to sweeten it; put it on the fire . . . keep

whisking it until it boils; take it from the fire, put the
cover on and put lighted charcoal on the cover, and let

it stay for half an hour; then put it into the jelly-bag
until it is clear: as for ornamenting that must depend

on fancy.
“18

Jellies were usually coloured. For yellow one could

use saffron or juice of cowslips; for red, cochineal,

juice of beetroot, gilly flowers, or Brazil wood

shavings; for purple, turnsole or powder of violets; for

green, juice of spinach.

CREAMS

These occurred in tremendous variety and, together

with jellies, were probably the most popular wet sweet-

meats. Here is a recipe for chocolate cream: “Scrape

fine one quarter pound of the best chocolate, put to it
as much water as will dissolve it. Put in a marble

mortar, beat it for half an hour. Put in as much fine

sugar as will sweeten it and a pint and a half of cream.
Mill it and as the froth rises lay it on a sieve. Put the
remainder part of your cream in your posset glasses

and lay the frothed cream upon them. It makes a

pretty mixture upon a set of salvers.’
19

GLASSES FOR WET SWEETMEATS
In a number of recipes there are references to

glasses. Mrs. Raffald tells us to serve whip’t syllabub

and chocolate cream in posset glasses,”
, 19

and in

other recipes she says that orange cream should be
“put into jelly glasses. Send it in upon a salver with

whips and jellies”, and that lemon cream should be
“put into sweetmeat glasses. It is proper to be put
upon a bottom salver among jellies and whips”.
2

Other authors mention jelly and syllabub glasses, and
there are references to custard cups, but it is not clear

whether or not these were made of glass.
The types of glasses that were used for wet

sweetmeats were:

Posset glasses.

Syllabub glasses.

Jelly glasses.
Custard glasses.

In fact, what one calls these glasses is rather

academic. The housewife in the eighteenth century

used whatever glass came to hand and names did not
mean a lot to her or, I suspect, to the authors of the

cookery books of the period. Nowadays there is

considerable variation in the naming of some of these
glasses between the various dealers and auction

houses. Later in this paper I will suggest what the

appropriate names might be.

POSSET GLASSES AND POTS
Posset was often taken as a nightcap or medicinal

drink and there seems to be general agreement today
that all glasses with double handles and a spout should

be called posset glasses or pots. In the eighteenth

century the term posset glass must have been used less

specifically, as one would not eat chocolate cream from
a spouted glass° and we also know that “My Lady

Middlesex makes Syllabubs for little Glasses with

spouts”.” All this goes to show that if one gives a

glass a name, although one hopes that it does reflect

the sort of use to which it was put, it is really only a

matter of convenience in classification and identifica-

tion. Posset glasses will be described in the next Paper;

they were the first of the specialised wet sweetmeat
glasses. The Corning Museum examples (fig. 6, p. 67)

show the progression from the earliest ones with cylin-
drical bowl and no foot, to the footed glasses with bell

or funnel bowl which were made early in the
eighteenth century. Thereafter it is simply a matter of

leaving off first the spout, and then gradually the
handles, and we have the syllabub and jelly glasses

which are the main concern of this paper.

JELLY GLASSES
Robert May in a seventeenth century recipe

instructs one to serve jelly “run into little round
glasses, four or five in a dish”,
22
and doubtless these

small “patty pans”, and indeed larger bowls, were
used for wet sweetmeats. The simple stemless jelly

glass, usually with bell or funnel bowl (fig. 22a), seems
to have been in common use through the eighteenth

and well into the nineteenth centuries and it appears
on paintings and prints of the period. These were the
main glasses on the pyramids and Mrs. Raffald

confirms their shape in a recipe for “Steeple cream”

which “should be put into jelly glasses. The next day

turn them out. .. stick a sprig of myrtle in the top of

every cream and serve it up with flowers around”.
23

The cream is turned out of conical glasses and so is

shaped like a steeple. Hannah Glasse confirms the

shape, her recipe tells one to “pour it into small high
gallipots like a sugar loaf at top” .24

The earliest jelly glasses often had conical bowls,

with everted folded rims, set in a milled thistle foot;

Francis Buckley dates them from the end of the

seventeenth century.” Later examples are to be

found with the common mould-blown patterns (fig.

24a, b, d, e) but “Lynn” glasses are rare. Cut

decoration can be quite early, matching the stemmed
sweetmeats already mentioned, and these glasses often
have scalloped rims. Wheel engraving (fig. 24c) is

common but I cannot recall seeing one engraved with

the diamond point. Dated glasses are rare, but I have

one inscribed “Ben Salmon 1772”. A number of

stemless bell-bowled glasses exist engraved with

Jacobite emblems, but usually I would call them firing

glasses or, as Francis Buckley describes them,

“Hogarth” glasses which “must be distinguished

from jelly glasses which were of similar shape but

much lighter in weight and more refined in
appearance”.
26

There is a jelly glass (fig. 27),

formerly in the Henry Brown and later the Horridge

Collection, which is engraved with the heraldic rose

and two buds. The engraving appears to be the work
of Engraver B as classified by Dr. Seddon in his paper

“The Jacobite Engravers” in
The Glass Circle,
Vol. 3.

The unusual feature is that the two buds are virtually

identical in size and shape; I understand from Dr.
Seddon that this is not quite without precedent, but I

do not know the explanation for it.

There are various foot forms, including flanged,

terraced (fig. 24c, d), lemon squeezer and oversewn,

there are also a number of glasses with overstrung

firing feet (fig. 24b) which are invariably made of soda

glass and are often rather unattractive; I have often

wondered why and where they were made. There are
many types of knop; a rarity is one containing an

opaque white thread, but I have never seen one with

a coloured thread. Jelly glasses occur less commonly

with hexagonal bowls which may be found with
engraved and wrythen-moulded decoration (fig. 24a),

and I have an unusual one with a “dimpled” bowl. A
few plain glasses with octagonal bowls exist. As with

all sweetmeat glasses, it is extremely rare to find

coloured examples, probably because the contents
were so often coloured. However there is a blue ribbed

jelly glass in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and a

sweetmeat glass exists with sapphire blue bowl and

foot, and colour twist stem containing a pale blue

column surrounded by a single opaque white spira1.
27

I hope that I have given some idea of the great

variety that is to be found in jelly glasses. It was an
almost impossible task to select the few that were

required for an illustration (fig. 24).

WHIP’T SYLLABUB GLASSES
Rather less common than jelly glasses are the

saucer- or pan-topped glasses which I like to call

whip’t syllabub glasses, a term which is to be found in

a number of eighteenth century advertisements and
inventories, as Miss McKearin also mentions in her

paper. The wide top held the froth of the whipped
cream and helped to prevent it mixing with the wine

below. These glasses occur with the same types of

decoration that are to be found on jelly glasses, but I
find that there is less variety in the forms of knop and

foot, and diamond- and honeycomb-moulded

examples (fig. 25c) are not common. The rare

“Lynn” glass illustrated in fig. 25b has a double ogee
bowl and could equally be called a jelly glass. Wheel

engraved glasses (fig. 25e) are quite common, but I

have not seen one with Jacobite emblems.

SINGLE-HANDLED GLASSES
As one might expect, these glasses are less easy to

find. Handles are more expensive to make and are

easily broken, and the 1745 Excise Act probably

greatly reduced the number of handled glasses that

were made. There are two types of glasses — those

with the jelly glass type of bowl (fig. 26) and those with

whip’t syllabub type bowl (fig. 29). Both types have
much the same range of feet, knops, and decoration as

their unhandled counterparts, although the range in

whip’t syllabub glasses is again more limited. Rarities
include glasses with hexagonal bowls (fig. 26b) and

bell-bowled “Lynn” glasses (fig. 26c). Engraved
glasses are rare, but there are two similar bell-bowled

Jacobite glasses engraved with the heraldic rose, an
open and a closed bud, an oak leaf, star, and the word

FIAT; one is in the Hale Collection at the Grocers’

Hall in London, and the other is in the Fitzwilliam

Museum, Cambridge (fig. 28). Although dessert

glasses with cut decoration were being made as early

as 1720, there is a notable lack of any similar handled
glasses.

DOUBLE-HANDLED GLASSES
These are less varied than single-handled glasses

and harder to find. There is a fine example, circa
1675, in the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery (fig. 30); the
tall round-funnel bowl has vertical ribbing on the

lower half, and a looped band of trailed decoration

above and the handles are reeded. It is 16.5cm high,

which is taller than the 9 to 12 cm usually found in
eighteenth century glasses. There are a number of

fairly ordinary plain glasses (fig. 32a, b, e) and

occasionally with these and single-handled glasses one

finds a miniature (fig. 32c, fig. 260. Ribbed specimens

occur (fig. 32d), but it is very difficult to find

diamond- or honeycomb-moulding. There is a

diamond-moulded glass in the Fitzwilliam Museum
(fig. 31), and Thorpe illustrates a honeycomb-

moulded one
28
; I should be interested to learn where

this glass is now. I know of no examples with engraved

decoration, “Lynn” rings, or with polygonal or

whip’t syllabub type bowls.

DOUBLE B-HANDLED GLASSES
In my experience these glasses are more varied than

double-handled ones. There are several early glasses

with cup base to the bowl (fig. 33b), perhaps circa

1720, and later glasses can have rib- (fig. 33g) and
diamond-moulded decoration (fig. 330. There is an

engraved example with double ogee bowl (fig. 33d)
and this is the nearest to the whip’t syllabub type bowl

that I have found in a double-handled glass.

SINGLE B-HANDLED GLASSES
Any glass with a single B-handle needs to be

examined with some care. I know of a glass which
apparently once had two handles, one of which has

been broken and polished off. It has appeared twice at

auction in London, and the defect was not catalogued.

There are examples with plain bowl which are rare

enough, but rarer still is the rib-moulded one shown in
Fig. 34. This is one of a pair, and I know of no other

variations in this type of glass.

HANDLED STEMMED GLASSES
There are a few stemmed double- or double B-

handled glasses which are usually given the name of
one of the wet sweetmeat glasses. There is the possibly

unique double-handled spouted posset glass with

hollow stem in the Corning Museum (fig. 6, p. 67).

There is a plain-stemmed double-handled glass in the

Cinzano Collection which is catalogued “wine or jelly

glass”. The Burrell Collection, Glasgow, has a fine
double-handled one with diamond-moulded bowl and

pedestal stem which is labelled as a “sweetmeat dish”.

There are two double B-handled ones in the Corning

Museum (fig. 35): the plain glass is catalogued as a

“jelly glass”, the one with the ribbed bowl as a

“posset glass”. This glass is illustrated by Bles
29

, who
also calls it a posset glass. Perhaps these glasses were
used as “top glasses’ in dessert arrangements, or they

may have been used as drinking glasses.

CUSTARD GLASSES
There are references in eighteenth century cookery

books to custard cups, but one does not know if these
were made of glass, porcelain, or pottery. Custard

glasses do not seem to appear in glassmaker’s lists or

advertisements until the very end of the eighteenth

century. Mr. Charleston states “This term (custards)

does not occur in eighteenth century lists. ”
30

They

are therefore latecomers on the scene and I will deal
with them only briefly. They tend to be short, often

less than 8cm high, and relatively wide of bowl, which

is often bucket or cup shaped (fig. 36). They are the
forerunners of the Victorian custard cups (fig. 36e)

which still exist in large numbers. Sometimes they

occur without feet, and may be found with cut and
engraved decoration. There are some early ribbed and

wrythen glasses, otherwise I cannot recall seeing any

with mould-blown decoration. Rarely they can be
found with a plain or opaque twist stem (fig. 36d), or

in green or blue metal with cut flute decoration;

Victorian examples can quite often be found in
“cranberry” glass.

TERMINOLOGY
There is agreement today that double-handled

glasses with spouts should be called posset glasses or

posset pots. The term custard glass or cup is also in
general use for the late eighteenth and nineteenth

century glasses just described, although this term is

also sometimes used to describe earlier handled
glasses, which I think is unfortunate.
There is evidence, already given, that the

unhandled jelly glass is correctly named, but the name
whip’t syllabub glass has gone out of use although I

think that it is the most appropriate one for saucer- or
pan-topped glasses, whether handled or not.

However, it is with the handled glasses with “jelly

glass type bowl” that one finds the greatest confusion.

They are most commonly called jelly glasses, perhaps
because of the bowl shape. Eighteenth century lists

and advertisements, although they often mention jelly

and syllabub glasses, very seldom mention handles

and the few British references to handles that I have

seen, have always referred to syllabub glasses. Price
lists from both the Whitefriars glasshouse, circa 1780,
and the Northumberland Glass Company, dated

1802, list jelly glasses and also syllabubs, and syllabubs

with one or two handles.
31

Bernard Hughes quotes a

price list from the Verreville glasshouse, Glasgow,

which includes syllabub glasses with and without

handles, but he gives no date.
32

Francis Buckley, who

was a great lover of these small dessert glasses and who
made a detailed study of eighteenth century records,

states: “In all probability at this time (1715 to 1727)
the syllabub glass was simply a jelly glass with one or

two handles added”.
25
Miss McKearin states in her

paper that Barrington Haynes was of the same

opinion.
The absence of any specific references to handles

from most advertisements may be because everyone
knew that the jelly glass was unhandled and the

syllabub glass handled. Bernard Hughes gives details
from the accounts of Oxford University and the

Cutlers’ Company in 1733.
33

Jelly glasses were priced

at 2/- per dozen, and syllabub glasses at 4/- per dozen.

As glass was sold by weight he deduces that syllabub

glasses were twice the size of jelly glasses. An alterna-

tive explanation could be that the syllabub glasses had
handles. This would not double the weight of the glass,

but handled glasses do tend to be a bit larger, and
involve more work in the making. My suggestion is,

therefore, that all these eighteenth century glasses with

handles should be called syllabub glasses; or, if they

have a saucer- or pan-top, whip’t syllabub glasses.

There are other types of handled glasses mentioned

in contemporary documents. Mrs. Raffald has a

recipe for ozyat, which seems to be her way of spelling

orgeat, and this “should be sent up in ozyat glasses
with handles”.
34
Hartshorne quotes a bill dated 1795

for “16 handled lemonade glasses and 21 handled

orgeat glasses”.
35
Mr. Charleston mentions a list

dated about 1770 in which are “orangeat glasses with
handles”.
3
° One can only speculate on what these

glasses may have been, but these references make one
realise how little one knows about these handled

glasses, and when one assigns a name it is mainly

useful for purposes of classification and identification.

DATING JELLY AND SYLLABUB GLASSES
The stem of a drinking glass usually gives some clue

as to when it was made, but with a stemless glass it is
often harder and one has to rely on form, metal, type

of decoration, etc. In the past there has been a
tendency to assume that handles disappeared after the

1745 Excise Act, and only reappeared at the end of the
century as single handles on custard glasses. Thorpe

states very definitely “Two handles are succeeded by
one about 1730 and after 1745 (Excise) there is a
characteristic economy of metal in the omission of

both.”
36

However, there is evidence
3
‘
, 32
that single-

and double-handled syllabub glasses were being made

towards the end of the century, and so, although the

1745 Act may have reduced the number of handled

glasses that were made, it does not seem to have

stopped their manufacture altogether.

COMMERCIAL GLASSES AND THOSE FROM
FINE DESSERT SETS
Quite a lot of fairly ordinary jelly and syllabub

glasses have survived to date, and many of these would

have been used by caterers or in places where

sweetmeats were sold. Rather better unhandled glasses
would have been in use on pyramids, or in small sets

as exemplified by the Laing Art Gallery set (fig. 23).
The rare handled glasses, which are usually of good

quality, must have belonged to fine dessert sets.
Francis Buckley describes them as “an aristocratic

group of glasses playing their part on the dinner and
supper tables of wealthy and fashionable folk”, and he

also says that “these syllabub glasses are amongst the
most beautifully designed of all old English

glasses” .
25

We do not know much about these handled glasses.

Did they stand on salvers, or direct on the table? We

do not know, and I have never found a picture in
which they are shown. Something of the rarity of these

glasses can be gauged from the fact that I have not

found any example of a single or double B-handled

syllabub glass in any museum in this country. I have

not made an exhaustive search, and perhaps the odd

one exists somewhere, in which case I hope that this

paper will prompt someone to let me know about it. In

America there are two double B-handled syllabub
glasses in the Corning Museum. The absence in

museum collections is not solely a reflection of their

rarity, as another factor is involved. The great

collectors of the past, whose collections have now
passed into our museums, tended to ignore these

stemless glasses, which they found rather insignificant

compared wiih their fine drinking glasses, and so often
they were not represented in their collections. But

even so, these handled glasses are not very common

and even in the eighteenth century might not have

been seen by many people; some of the painters of the

day may not have been acquainted with them. When

James Gillray drew his satirical sketch of the Prince of
Wales (fig. 13), the pyramid that he shows is just a bit

of the background. Probably he could not be bothered

to draw anything more elaborate, but possibly he drew

the sort of glasses he knew rather than the sort that the
Prince might have used.

COLLECTING
Wet sweetmeat glasses exist in great variety, and

one can find out quite a lot about what they contained,
and the settings in which they were used, which

enhances one’s interest in, and appreciation of, them.
Posset glasses and, even more so the larger lidded

posset pots, are really museum pieces; the odd one

may grace a more general collection, but it would be
virtually impossible to build up a specialised collection

now.
The many permutations and combinations of bowl,

foot, knop and handle forms, and the various types of

decoration that are to be found in jelly and syllabub
glasses, offer a most rewarding field for the collector.

As in all specialised collecting there is always the hope
of extending further the bounds of possibility. Where

is that elusive jelly glass purported to have been

enamelled by one of the Beilby family? Is there a jelly
with a coloured thread in the knop, or a double-
handled syllabub with “Lynn” rings or Jacobite

engraving? Or a more sophisticated single B-handled
glass? The possibilities are endless. This was rather a

neglected field of collecting, but in the last ten years

these glasses have become more popular, with the

inevitable effect on prices and availability.
Custard glasses and cups, which have received only

the briefest mention here, still exist in large numbers

and great variety. They can often be picked up at a
reasonable price and I think that they offer very good

opportunities for the modest collector.

CONCLUSION
The coffee houses, confectioners, and caterers of the

eighteenth century have long since disappeared, but
we still have with us quite a lot of the plain business-
like glasses which were their stock in trade. Contem-

porary accounts can give us an inkling of the

splendours of the grand dessert; but the glassmakers of

the day, with their eye for form and craftsmanship,
have bequeathed to us some very fine glasses which

were once part of the extravagant life style enjoyed by
the upper classes of that society. All these glasses are

not only interesting and sometimes beautiful artefacts

to be collected and admired, but in addition they still
reflect the spirit of their times and the settings in Which

they were used.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
My very grateful thanks are due to John Towse,

who took the photographs of glasses from my

collection (figs. 9, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 32, 33, 34,

36).

•

NOTES

1.
Arthur Churchill Ltd.,
Glass Notes,
No. 11, London

(December 1951), p. 11.

2.
R. Fletcher,

The Parkers at Saltram,
London (1971), p.

49.

3.
M.D. George,
Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in

the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum,
London (1978), Satire No. 10072.

4.
M. Ashley,
James II,
London (1977), p.130.

5.
M.D. George,
op. cit.,
Satire No. 6453.

6.
Ibid.,
Satire No. 5888.

7.
Ibid.,
Satire No. 6317.

8.
Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum,

Reference S. Collings 1* a 1.

9.
Ibid,
Reference J.J. Chalon 170.b.7 No. 18.

10.
For examples see L.M. Bickerton,
An Illustrated Guide to

Eighteenth Century English Drinking Glasses,
London

(1971), Plates 402 to 404.

11.
T. Hughes,

Sweetmeat and Jelly Glasses,
London (1982),

p. 56.

12.
E. Burton,
The Georgians at Home,
London (1967),

p. 220.

13.
R. May,
The Accomplisht Cook,
London (1671), p. 293.

14.
E. Raffald,

The English Housekeeper,

London (1786),

p. 208.

15.
E. Burton,

op. cit.,
p. 193.

16.
A. Hartshorne,
Old English Glasses,

London and New

York (1897), p. 307.

17.
E. Cleland,
A new and easy method of Cookery,
Edinburgh

(1759), p. 210.

18.
F. Nutt,
The Imperial and Royal Cook,
London (1809),

pp. 204-5.
19.

E. Raffald,
op. cit.,
p. 248.

20.
Ibid.,
pp. 252-3.

21.
See fig. 3, p. 65.

22.
R. May,

op. cit.,
p. 204.

23.
E. Raffald,
op. cit.,
p. 251.

24.
H. Glass,
The Art of Cookery,
London (1781), p. 320.

25.
F. Buckley, “The Jelly Glass and its Relations”,

Antique Collector,
IX, pp. 298-300.

26.
F. Buckley, “Hogarth Glasses”,
Glass

(Dec. 1931),

p. 498.

27.
This glass is illustrated by Messrs. Sheppard and

Cooper Ltd. in the Exhibition Catalogue of the 1984

International Ceramics and Glass Fair, London; Frank

Davis, “A Page for Collectors”,
The Illustrated London

News,
23 July, 1955, p. 152; Arthur Churchill Ltd.,

Glass Notes,
No. 15, London (December, 1955), p. 5.

28.
W.A. Thorpe,

A History of English and Irish Glass,

London (1929), Vol. 2, plate LXIX.

29.
J. Bles,
Rare English Glasses of the 17th and 18th Centuries,

London (n.d. ?1926), Plate 7.

30.
R.J. Charleston,
op. cit.,

p. 170.

31.
Information kindly communicated by Miss Wendy

Evans, Museum of London. See also fig. 3, p. 84.

32.
B. Hughes, “Glasses for the Syllabub”,
Country Life,

June 1959, p. 1272.

33.
B. Hughes,
English Glass for the collector,

London (1967),

p. 83.

34.
E. Raffald,
op. cit.,
p. 333.

35.
A. Hartshorne,
op. cit.,
p. 471.

36.
W.A. Thorpe,
op. cit.,

Vol. 1, p. 325.

Figure 1. Daniel Mytens,

Marriage Banquet of Joseph II and Isabella of Parma

(1760). Schonbrunn Palace,

Vienna.

wear:
,
ei

The

Desert thus,

Figure 2. Dessert layout (“Trzonfo da Tavola”), mainly in glass, from the Palazzo Morosini, Venice. Venetian; 18th century. Museo

Vetrario, Murano.

CONFECTIONER.
23

Ice cream, different colours.
WhVd fyllabubs.

Clear jellies.

Lemon credal

in glaffes,

In the middle a
high pyramid

of one (Aver

above another,
the bottom one

Nonpareils.

large, the next

Golden

(mallet, the

PiPPin
,
v

top one left ;

theme (Avers

are to be fill’d

with all kinds

of wet and dry

Eloomage flock

(meet-meats

Sloomage flock

with almonds.

in glafs,barkers

with almonds.

or little plates,
coloved jellies,
cream, &c.

bifcuits,
almonds and

roft.dia nuts.

little %nicknacks.

Almonds

and bottles of

and taifins.

Rowers prettily
intmnix’d, the

laver

mull

.1 Lags

prefers’d Fruit

in it.

Leann erczm

Clear jellin

Whip’d fyllabubs.

in glaffe..

Ice et: dm, different colours.

Figure 3. Dessert layout from Charles Carter’s
The Practical

Figure 4. Plan for a dessert from Hannah Glasse’s

The

Cook,
London (1730).

Complete Confectioner,

Dublin (1762).

——-,

—

–

—
–

.
`
–

I
I

4
‘
)

.
)0
1
4;

••••

‘
S

‘

‘d

‘
‘
4,

,
.,

•
•
•’.

‘
C
T
..”.

1.
,

‘

‘•
•
,
”

1
n
if

”

–
– –

‘
/

..
)
:1
1

–

1
1
1.,
.

,
–
—.;
,

.
—
–
-*
:
^
,,,

,
,

•
–

•

v
.
.

–
.

i
‘
..

.
.

N.
‘1
1…
–

_„
.
..
,
..
,
e
2.
–
–
–

4
4

;—-
r
;’
–
.

),„
„
:
`
,
e-

–

h…
…

.
.

t
tih

.
,
.

r
e

-1,

—

):-‘1

– ,
.
‘

j
)

c
t \

–
.

.
4,
n
.
.
,.

il
l

,
:
>,
,,

,
,
,
_

O
t
t

5
•

FP1
9
)

,.
.
.

–

•

i a

……

…,….._,

..
….

:
”
.
‘

I
N
IM
(

•

),
,

‘ :
•
:
,

:
:
,,
,
e,
–

:..

kl
ro
t
t

A:
:.

k ,

„

.
.
1

•

Li
,

‘1

r
; .

,,
‘,.

.
.

/
*
*.
i3,
,

,
,

4;
,
1
46,,

‘,

_
:0
‘

1
.

,
,,
,
,
,

Y.
‘
‘ )

‘

.
/ja

.
..
7
,

–
“..
;
i
.o

.
,
c
,
C-,
,
id
d_

”
”’•,
t

,,*
,
„,
,

– ..
..
e…
.

‘

.
/.
.,
–

‘

N
• t
o
*:
:
,

‘,

.
.
–..,

‘….
.;,

.
,.
..,
,,,,

7
–

‘

P:,
A
g
e

.,,

,
,,

‘

‘
‘,

-..„

‘

‘3
n

“i.

4.
,
,

4
,

N
,

r
‘.
1-

”

‘
”

(
)

A
T-
1

k
.

v,..
..
e
‘

‘
‘
s

–

‘
1
14.
7
4
..

–

….
..
.
..
..
.

.
/
,
,
‘

`’.

4
7

‘`)
,

//
/
‘

„,

•

n
•P
er

T
i
,
,

:
‘`,
•

.-
–
.
–

”
((i
/

////
//.

/
.

‘

”
”
4

,
–,

/.
.,
wa
re

hou

The
A
*,

–

•
,
!-

“k

t.
7,,
–
–
– e

.„
4
.,

.
..
,

.,
.
.

.
..
.
,

,
,
,,

,
.,
„

„,.
.
,,

-„
..
.,
„

–

–
,
r
–

c
..

,,
,,
:

‘
7

i
v

i
l
i

y
i

r/..
,
,
,
,,

–

,
,

7.
Th

.
:,
,

s,,
I,
1

A
t
SOI

t
S

O
r
(
’11

1104
:0
:

/
i

(
1
1117
“.:

-“L.

$
1
0.
.,,
r

‘
”
.

..
\

•

..%
•77
9
”
.

‘
”
‘

”.I..144

(

N
T

11)
0 N
T

–
‘
Ir

1
n

..
‘ –

–
,.

‘

—

4
011E
“N

‘
‘

—

.
4
2
0
1
F
r

–
–

/
‘

‘
14
6,
–

,
,
,
f/.
4y
.
1
,
,.

41411411°””millmomommr

–
–
–

4
,

..
‘;‘

,..

,
A

)

,,
„

.
.

8.,.

‘;
‘.
–
4
.

4
–

–
..

-,
,

‘(1’-,
—
—
–

–
rk„,

..,
–

,,,..

,
,.
.,

,
i
;
,,
;

,
,

.
7.,;,„,,

–

,
:

”

M
M
I
N
IF
i
ll
o

-,
t

\
Ii
i

.
…_
,
,
..
“

1
–
.
1(‘

,,
,

,
•
•,
/
.
/

,,,

,
,
,.
.
-,

.
.

”’
..
.
5
‘

‘
‘
‘

”’
”
`

,
4 1
,

/ d
ui,

Z.
.
,

.,
1 ,

\
I

7 /
;

i ,
1
1 .

.
..
,
.
.
.
c.
.
,

,
,

I
I
I
,

)

#
f

– i
‘

–
5
.
”
–

–
–
–

,
,

-,
–

–

,
1
,
7

O
la
fs

ll
so
rt
,

.
/

‘

‘imaimmimi
le
r
a
i
ro
s

r
i

–

a
1

.
.
–
”
”

A
l

.
.
.
.
.
.
. .
.
……

,
.
..
.
0

.
.
.
.

.—

k!..
,

„

0
1
0
!

.
.
..
”
.

1
Ilip
l
o

oil
,..
om
om
IS
;0

,
.,

…
1
_
,
..

•

..
.

. .

..,….
.
.
.

-i
—

—
‘

0
1

0
–
l
‘;
—

–

.
.,
—

•

…
A
.
.

-.
,
,

‘
‘,
-,
–

*
/
–
.
7
“,.

.
\
‘c
e
,

‘

111
(

_..,

•

.
4.
–

”r

‘,

e
Irt
i

g
.

,
,
.
/
•
.

.
,
,
,
,
,
t
e
‘ 1

I
–

)
.
6
.
‘

.
…

.
–

.
0
.

„
Z

Al
r
.

‘

‘
1,
..
m

;
n
.
*

–
”

t
‘
3.f
t
“‘

– I
V
‘.

-..

–
.

g-
–
A
r

ri
a..
.
—

1
.

—

‘
–
–

”
i

—.
1
1

–,
‘

‘
”

.
.
.
.
–
–.-

–
–

•
••
•••

–
/
‘
‘.
,
1;

‘

–
•

Fig
u
re
6.

Py
ram

id w
it
h top

g
lass,
je

ll
ies
a
n
d f

lowe
r
–
bo
tt

les.

Midd
le

o
f
18t
h

Fig
ur
e
5.

Tra

de
ca
r

do
f

May
dwe

ll a
n
d Win

dle,

Lon

do
n,
a
bou

t
1
760-

75.

c
en

tu
ry.

Dia
m.

o
f

low
e
s
t
sa

lver

15%
in.

(
4
0c
m.
).

Cour
tesy
t
he

Hen
ry

Fra

ncis

Pon
t

Win

te
r
t
hu
r

Museu

Figure 7. Sweetmeat, cut-

glass. English; middle of
18th century. H.6in.

(15.2cm.). Victoria and

Albert Museum. Crown

e
(
8
7″
z

i
‘
r
24.”):

0″

,r1,1
:

4/7

Figure 8. Pattern for

“conditorier” from the

Nestetangen price-list
(1763). After Polak

GGS,
XI).
4,

‘”

9
low aa9.

1
A’U

4c..7

Figure 10.
Epergne,
cut-glass with hanging baskets and

Figure 9.
Epergne

with hanging baskets. English; middle

silver fittings. English; about 1765-75.H.17
g
in.

of 18th century. H.10 Y
i

in. (26cm.). E. T. Udall, Esq.

(43.5cm.). Courtesy the Henry Francis du Pont

Photo: John Towse.

Winterthur Museum.

..NAVIV” .46.16

•

Figure 13. “A Voluptuary under the horrors of Digestion” (the future George IV), by James Gillray, 1792. Victoria and Albert

Museum, Crown Copyright.

Figure 14. Detail from an engraving by L.P. Boitard illustrating

The Scribleriad
(1751). Courtesy Cyril Staal,

Esq.

C
ON 1
1
Fd (
1
1
1
1 (

) N
I’

ER.

lo eso c col – ‘ve ca 1-
–
—

r Ct

t
—
‘V .

4 7
,

(,…., –
(

WP —
)

//le’ .

—
id_i_LED

A V. —

Figure 15. Trade-card of George Gascoigne, Confectioner in Leeds; late 18th century. Temple
Newsam, Leeds. Photo: West Park Studios, Leeds.

/bola,

…v.v….. al

.F .V’/l

Figure 17. Engraving by C. Truchy after the painting by Joseph Highmore “Lady Davers ill-treating
Pamela”, published in 1745. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Figure 16. Engraving by C. Williams “The Wedding Dinner, or Moses and the Magistrate”. 1812. Private Collection.

ft,
‘
14
–
4

.
.

t
.

.
.„..

4
r
–

–

‘•

4,
,

,
u

:
,

.
.

i
,

‘

*
”
Y
r

1
1
1
1
04
t

-:
n

Iii,

•

—

.
•
4

–
–

47
4
0.
.,
‘N
dig
e
,
.
1
4
Tr

lik,

‘-
iz

t.
,.
,
.

…
4

..
.
-_
,_

–
•

”

‘

„,..

••••

,
.
,.

–

.
t.
.

_x
‘
19

-‘
‘
—
—,..
.

4,
..

–
.

——-

Fi
gu
re

18.
Pa

in
t
ing

Ph
ilipp

Merc
ier

(
168
9 to

1760),

“The

Se
nse

o
f
Ta
s
te
“.

Chr

is
t
ie,

Ma
nson

an
d
Woo
ds,

Lo
n
don.

ild

Vr
e

r:
,.

II/
,s

Figure 19. Engraving by James Gillray, “Hero’s recruiting at Kelsey’s”. 1797. British Museum.

Cl’abbs

l’i,reen Pier

!’..’.1.11114.1

lir

all co

•

21:mtb

Dania
lta ha

rarni

Cr-a

Figure 22. Eighteenth century jelly and whip’t syllabub glass. Height

9.5cm.

Figure 23. Engraved dessert set, mid-eighteenth century. Laing Art
Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Figure 20. Table layout from Patrick Lamb’s Royal Cookery,

London. 1731. British Library.
()NT D

I, (
1

(J t’..4 I
m

Figure 21. Engraving by H. Pyall of the drawing by M.

Egerton, “A most delicious Ice”, 1825. Burlington Gallery,
London.

*Olt

\
”
6
”
3
/
4
nnn
••0
011.1

Figure 24. Eighteenth century jelly glasses. Height b 9.0cm, d 12.5cm.

Figure 25. Eighteenth century whip’t syllabub glasses. Height c 9.0cm, e 11.6cm.

Figure 26. Eighteenth century single-handled syllabub glasses. Height f 6.2cm, c 11.9cm.

Fi
g

ure 27. Jelly glass with Jacobite engraving, circa 1750. Height

10.0cm.
Figure 28. Single-handled syllabub glass with Jacobite engraving,

circa 1750. Height 11.4cm. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Figure 29. Eighteenth century single-handled whip’t syllabub glasses. Height b 8.5cm, c 11.9cm.

Figure 30.
Double-handled

posset or syllabub
glass, circa

1680. Height 16.5cm. Cecil Higgins Art Gallo)), Bedford.
Figure 31. Double-handled diamond-moulded syllabub glass, circa

1730. Height 11.5cm. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Figure 32. Eighteenth century double-handled syllabub glasses. Height c 4.8cm, e 11.6cm.

Figure 33. Eighteenth century double B-handled syllabub glasses. Height a 10.2cm, b 12.2cm.

Figure 34. Single B-handled ribbed syllabub glass, circa

Figure 35. Stemmed double B-handled glasses, first half of the eighteenth

1740. Height 11 . Ocm.

century. Height circa 17cm. Corning Museum of Glass, New York.

a
Figure 36.
Late

eighteenth/nineteenth century custard glasses. Height a 6.7cm, d 12.9cm.

POSSETS,

SYLLABUBS AND THEIR
VESSELS

by Helen McKearin

A Paper read to the Circle on 19 January, 1982

INTRODUCTION (by R. J. Charleston)

The present Paper was billed as a joint offering by

Miss Helen McKearin and myself, and it should be

made clear at the outset that the giant’s share of the

work was hers, I being mainly the mouthpiece. Miss

McKearin’s work was done many years ago, however,

and I have taken the liberty of annexing some thoughts
of my own based on occasional lucky finds which over
the years have thrown light on the subject. These are

confined to the end of the Paper.
Miss McKearin’s text was originally conceived as

an article for
Antiques
Magazine, to which she was a

not infrequent contributor in the years following the

War. It was certainly intended to be illustrated, and

some of her photographs, which were in the file which

she so generously entrusted to me, have been used for
the printed version of this Paper, together with a few
additional illustrations from other sources.

First, a word about Miss McKearin herself. She was

the eldest daughter of the late George McKearin, of

Hoosick Falls, New York State, an insurance broker

who became interested in glass — mainly American

and English — and who moved more and more into
its collection and study, with the result that he formed

important collections in both fields, a great part of
them ultimately passing to the Corning Museum of

Glass, N.Y. Miss McKearin helped her father with his
researches, and in 1941 they published jointly
American

Glass
—
over 600 pages long and with several thousand

illustrations — which immediately became the

standard work on its subject. It was by no means a
restrictive volume, however, for it touched on many

aspects of glass which were not specifically American,

but relevant to the development of American glass.

The McKearins ranged widely, and their book

contains many side-lights of fascination to glass

students.
American Glass
was followed after many years

by
200 Years of American Blown Glass

(1950), a lavishly

illustrated survey of this slightly more restricted field.

This garnered the harvest of knowledge which had

accrued to the authors in the intervening years. In
1953 Miss McKearin published under her own hand

The Story of American Historical Flasks
for the Corning

Museum, essentially the catalogue of a Corning

Exhibition on this subject.
George McKearin died in 1958 and Helen

McKearin worked on alone, following mainly her own

interest in flasks and bottles, which was to have issue
after many years, first in

Bottles, Flasks and Dr. Dyott

(1970) and lastly in
American Bottles and Flasks and their

Ancestry
(1978), produced in collaboration with

Kenneth M. Wilson, and a work as richly informative

and suggestive in its own field as
American Glass
had

been thirty-seven years earlier. These substantial

works were produced against a background of articles,
always rich in material and ideas, of which perhaps the

most familiar to English readers will be those which

she wrote for Arthur Churchill’s
Glass Notes
in 1954

and 1955 (“18th century advertisements of Glass
Imports into the colonies and the United States”,

Parts I and II). You will find the same rich texture in

the Paper that follows.

PART I: POSSETS

Posset
pot
and
syllabub glass
—
these are familiar terms

in the antiquarians’ glossary, presumably derived
from the vessels’ particular function. The first has long

been given to spouted pots and cups (cf. figs. 1, ff.);
the second, shared with “jelly”, to deep slender-

bowled glasses, usually with a foot, with and without
one or two handles. The nature of a dish or beverage

does tend to determine that of the vessel in which it is
served or from which it is consumed; therefore, since

20th-century consensus seems to be that a posset was

a drink and a syllabub either a drink or a sweet, the

shapes seem suited to the assigned special functions.

Consequently the assertions of Howard Herchell

Cotterell, an English authority on pewter, that posset

was “invariably eaten with a spoon” and the term
“posset pot” “seems to have been abandoned in the
XVIIth century” command attention. Equally

arresting is the statement in one of Sir Kenelm

Digby’s 17th-century syllabub recipes that “My Lady
Middlesex makes syllabubs for little glasses with

spouts”,
2
which she had certainly acquired before

1665, the year Sir Kenelm died (fig. 3). These phrases,

so contrary to general opinion today, inspired an

investigation of possets, syllabubs and their vessels.

Thirty-five dictionaries from 1573
3
to the present,

over one hundred and forty books on cookery,

confectionery and physic published from 1587 to the
mid-19th century
4
and references in contemporary

literature yielded superabundant evidence leading to
the conclusion that most current beliefs as to the

nature of possets, syllabubs and their vessels are as

oversimplified as are their dictionary definitions.

The evidence gleaned indicates that posset

antedated, probably sired, syllabubs and originated in

England. In 1617 it was defined by Minsheu as “a
kind of drink used in England” (free translation of his

Latin)
5
and by Salmon, two centuries later, as “un

certain breuvage a l’anglais” .
6

Indubitably, posset (as

a verb defined as “to curdle”) began as a curdled
potable and to the lexicographers consulted remained

a simple and slightly varied drink, basically milk
curdled with wine or other liquor. There was one

exception: both a
plain
and a
sack
posset (“un breuvage

epais pour qui se portent a bien, et qui sert a fortifier

la nature”) were given in Salmon’s English section.

It seems indisputable also that possets originally,

like cordials and juleps, were pleasant and quite

versatile medicinal drinks, usually administered hot in

the 16th-18th century treatment of fevers, ague, chills
and colds,
7
often made more effective by brewing in

the
drink
certain herbs and flowers believed to have

curative properties.° Either cool or warm posset drink

was frequently taken as a soothing potion after a

sweat
9
or following some violent medication.” Posset

drinks served too as a masking vehicle for unpalatable
medicines given for many disparate ills — the stone,”

the “frenzie”, “leprosie” ,I
2
smallpox, measles,”

“plurise” or shortness of breath’
4
and jaundice.”

Posset’s medicinal reputation extended into the 20th

century in country areas and beyond England. Salmon
explained for the French “le grand usage [of a plain
posset] est par rapport a la medicine;” one of the

characters in THE GALANTRYS (1943) after being
“plied with hot bags” and “given a mustard foot

bath” was “forced to drink a steaming posset which

tasted sharp and aromatic and twigs of rosemary

floating in it. ‘ ”
6

In the many books studied the first mention of

posset — after Baret’s 1573 definition as “ale or wine
poured into hot milk” — was Thomas Dawson’s in

1587: his powder for the stone mixed “first and last in

posset drink made with White wine or Ale” .
17

The

first non-medicinal recipe was in
The Good Hous-wives

Treasurie
(1588): “For a Posset. Take a Posnet of

cream and seethe it and put Sinamon in it, then take

halfe Ale and halfe Sacke and put Sugar and Sinamon
in it.” In the cookery books, the usual designation of

such possets without thickening ingredients was
“simple”, “plain”, “ordinary” and “sack”, but
there were only fourteen out of one hundred and forty-

five recipes analysed and compared.
All

first appeared

before 1751.
Only a few were repeated in later books –

indicating perhaps simple posset’s decline — except
medicinally — even as a culinary curiosity in the

fashionable world. Unfortunately the vessels for

serving simple possets, medicinal or otherwise, were

not specified. However, the spouted pot certainly was

an ideal vessel for mixing; and, for individual servings
especially of medicinal possets, so was the spouted cup
which today is called also “posset pot” or “feeding

cup”.
Though
simple,
these posset drinks had a varied

social life. Presumably they were the type fashionable
as a hot or warm night-cap well into the 17th century,
considered as sleep-inducing as hot milk or ovaltine is,

or was, a few years ago. The habit, one surmises,
reached most levels of society and probably long

before 1610, when Shakespeare had Lady Macbeth

drug the bedtime possets of Duncan’s grooms.” Also

simple possets must have been served at evening
gatherings, that is, any time after the “mid-day”
dinner. The “good sack posset” accompanying an

“excellent cake”, served about midnight at one of
Samuel Pepys’ parties in 1668 probably was of the
potable, not the spoonmeat, species. Certainly it lived

up to the sack posset’s reputation as a restorative: the

party “went to dancing and singing again until two in

the morning”.
19

It is likely that simple posset drinks continued in

favour into the 18th century in groups removed from
the stream of fashion. At least John Galt’s Reverend

Balwhidder became reconciled to tea about 1762

partly because “it did no harm to the head of the

drinkers, which was not always the case with the posset
that was the fashion before”. In his younger days, he
recalled, decent ladies often came home on summer

evenings “with red faces, tosy and cosh (i.e. tipsy and

snug) from a posset making” .
2

° Perhaps it was tea

which displaced social posset drinking generally and so
may be held responsible for the steady decline of posset

drink as a refreshment and a night-cap, and so too the

spouted pot’s use in its making and serving.
Sack posset (drink or sweet), in particular, played

another role in society.
2
‘ It appears to have been as

customary to proper wedding festivities as the bride’s

cake.
22
The custom was followed in Puritan Boston as

late as 1719
23
and, if Smollett was a faithful reporter,

in England well into the 18th century by some who

clung to ancient ways. On their wedding night the
middle-aged Mrs. Tabitha Bramble and Captain
Lismahago sat in state on the nuptial couch “like

Saturn and Cybele, while the benediction posset was

drank . .. ”
24
Apparently the potency of sack was

such that a little went a long way and some were eaten
not “drank”. Mrs. Ann Blencowe’s 1694 “sack posset

att a wedding”
25
called for only three-quarters of a

pint of sack to a quart of cream and ten eggs or a quart

of milk and fifteen eggs. The milk or cream, heated to

boiling point, was then poured “as hard as possible”

into the sack and eggs, and the posset was “let stand

by ye fire half an hour . . ..” After that contact with

heat it surely must have been
eaten.

A quart of liquid poured hard into even a small

quantity of splashy substances would call for a deep

vessel. But, when thickened, would it be pourable
through a spout? Unfortunately Mrs. Blencowe failed

to mention a vessel in her recipe. In fact there were

disappointingly few references in any of the many

sources to the vessel in which possets were made and

served, and those few were in recipes. It seems signifi-

cant, however, that the terms
pot
and

posset pot

occurred
only in 17th-century recipes,

and then only eight

times,
and
(with one exception)

only as an alternative to

a bason.
The exception was in Digby’s “A plain

ordinary Posset made and served in a ‘pot’
.”
26

In so

far as possets were concerned, this evidence seems to

indicate that if the term
posset-pot
was not entirely

abandoned in the 17th century, as Cotterell felt was
the case, it certainly was on the way out, and that the

use of pots for possets was also actually no longer
fashionable.

The decline may have set in about the turn of the

16th into the 17th century when, apparently, the

simple possets first met rivalry from the compound or
fancy possets for which a bason was more functional

than a spouted pot, and when the popularity of spoon-
meat custardy posset began soaring in sophisticated

circles. At least, this seems implied in a satirical

conversation in the second act of John Marston’s play
The Malcontent (1604).
27
Maquerelle’s invitation “to

eat the most miraculously, admirably, astonishable

composed posset with three curds, without any drink”

amazed Bianca and Emilia. “Even here is”, she said

as they entered the third scene, “three curds in three
regions, individually distinct, most methodically

according to art composed without any drink.” To

Bianca’s “without any drink!”, she replied “Upon

my honor. Will you sit and eat it?” Said Emilia
“Good the composure: the Receipt, how is it?” It was

a parody, a mocking of many recipes in the cookery

books. Such recipes multiply from about 1653 on,
reaching their peak in number, variety and frequency

of inclusion shortly after 1700 and falling off sharply
towards the end of the century.
Of the one hundred and forty-five recipes analyzed

one hundred and thirty-one were for fancy possets. All
but sixteen called for thickening ingredients and the
directions for preparation support Mr. Cotterell’s

phrase “invariably eaten with a spoon”. Most of them

were to be cooked double-boiler fashion, frequently

over a chafing dish, “Till it be thick as you would have
it”
28
or “till it comes thick and smooth as

Custard”.
29
Those “let stand over the coles for half

an hour”
3
° or set by the fire were likely to “be

Custard to the bottom . . . ”
3
‘ No wonder the common

verb in the recipes was “eat” not “drink”. The two
tablespoonsful of grated bread in one of Digby’s 17th-

century recipes were only a hint of things to come.
32

Eggs were the usual and richest thickener: before

1750, eight to nineteen usually to one and one-half

quarts of liquid; afterwards fifteen were standard.

While barley was used by 1665,
33

oatmeal by 1730,
34

Naples biscuits and white bread by 1747,
35

they
apparently did not attain popularity until after the

mid-18th century.
36
Eggs were doubtless more

expensive and certainly more work in the preparation

of a fancy posset. The remaining sixteen recipes were
for lemon, orange and currant possets, a cold fruity

variety without thickening ingredients; and all, one
feels after studying one hundred and sixty-seven

syllabub recipes, more closely related to that

concoction
37
than to posset.

All the fancy possets could be classified as culinary

delicacies. In the cookery books which were divided

into chapters or sections they were grouped either with
gruels, white pots and dishes
for
the sick, or with

dishes for fast days and Lenten fare; or with fools;
creams and related sweets or under spoonmeats. It

would seem therefore that their principal uses were
threefold: a tempting dish for the sick and

convalescent (a natural outgrowth of posset drink’s
medicinal and soothing properties); for Fish-Days or,

as Hannah Glasse phrased it in the mid-18th century,
a “fast dinner”,
38
and for Lenten meals generally; as

a sweet served either with a heavy meat course or

dessert. However, in only two cook books, both of
mid-18th century date, were possets included in bills

of fare. In 1749 Elizabeth Moxon indicated that either

a sack posset or gruel might be at the “top of the table
for a winter supper in March”;
39
in 1767, Ann

Peckham included syllabubish lemon, orange and

currant possets among dishes for the second course

(customarily a meat course) of dinner in July and
August, and for supper.
4
° In some rural parts a

“Harvest Posset” made of milk, beer, sugar and

bread was considered a “palatable supper” by

itself.
4
‘ In addition, of course, like the posset drinks,

fancy posset would have been a suitable company dish

and evening refreshment, especially in winter.
42

The vessels mentioned in a few recipes and the

directions for preparation seem to indicate that

normally the vessel in which the fancy posset was

mixed was that in which it was sent to the table. In the

17th century a basin was favoured for fancy as well as simple possets. In the 18th century silver basins, quart

china basins and deep dishes were recommended. At

the table the posset would be doled out in individual
portions, probably in small bowls, dishes or cups. The

supper “Harvest posset” was served in each man’s
wooden dish.
43
Interesting utensils were used in

making Sarah Harrison’s Sack Butter Posset (1738)
44

— a quart of cream, half a pint of sack and sugar to

sweeten were put into a “Glass Churn” and churned

until “as thick as Butter”, then poured into a dish and
“sugar scraped on”. That is posset-like enough for

one school. But she added, “if you put it into a Glass
Syllabub Pot, let it stand a Day or more, and it will
have Drink at the Bottom”: and so, cold, become a

syllabub! There is little difference between this posset
and a 1686 cream syllabub.45

Glasses

for posset were not mentioned until the

mid-18th century, when they were specified for

syllabubish cold lemon posset
46
and as an alternative

to
dish
for a cold lemon or currant posset.
47

They

were not mentioned again until 1838, in a recipe for

whip’t posset (“syllabub” would have been more
accurate).” The actual term
posset glasses

occurred

only in recipes for whip’t syllabubs(!), and then only

in John Farley’s
The London Art of Cookery,

first

published in 1783, and those books in which his

recipes had been lifted intact. Nevertheless Mr. Farley

had authority for the term: posset glasses were

advertised March 24, 1758, in the
Liverpool

Chronicle,
49
apparently the only instance in any

advertisement, English or American. On the other

hand, in a list of trade names of the principal glass

utensils made between 1675 and 1695, compiled by

W.A. Thorpe from contemporary sources other than
Ravenscroft and Greene, not a posset glass, cup or pot

appears.
5

° It is aggravating that no clue to form a

type of the
posset glasses
was given. However, the

nature of the concoctions to be served in them leads to

the conclusion that they were the so-called jelly and

syllabub glasses of the period.
The mass of evidence studied leads to certain

general conclusions as to (1) possets and (2) the vessels

associated with them. Posset was a large family
eventually with three main branches: first medicinal

drinks, conservatively retaining their character down
the centuries, followed by social drinks which

produced erratic changelings, the most prolific branch

of all. These, the fancy possets, gradually lost their
social evening role in so far as the world of fashion and

cooks were concerned. They became mainly a purely

nourishing, substantial, if sometimes choice
dish

–

one brought to the table in the basin, bowl or deep dish
in which it had been made, normally served hot and

the individual portions
eaten

from individual vessels.

Also while there can be no doubt that the spouted pots

(figs. 4-5) were used in making posset drinks, there

can also be no doubt that they were old-fashioned by
the end of the 17th century.They gave way to the basin

as the poularity of ordinary or plain possets waned and

that of fancy or compound possets waxed. Moreover,

there can be- no doubt that the spouted pot was not

dedicated to posset alone, since in its 17th century

heyday it was called “a posset pott, or a wassell cup,
or a sallibube pott” in Randle Holme’s
Academie or

Storehouse of Armory . . . ,
datable between 1663 and 1682

(fig. 2). Housewife, cook and even manufacturer
doubtless used the content-name which familiar

practice or family tradition most closely associated

with it. Though posset pot or wassail cup or syllabub
pot cannot be said to be incorrect terms, each does

imply that the vessel so-called was specially made for

its special use so perhaps the purist will prefer to use

the less restrictive but descriptive term spouted — or
spout — pot or cup as the case may be.

PART II. SYLLABUBS

Syllabub was posset’s kissing kin, a rather frivolous
one as indicated by the fact that for two hundred and
fifty years at least “a syllabub has been figuratively

taken for a florid but frothy and empty discourse”.’
In some ways syllabub was less variable than posset, in

others more so. Of at least six different spellings used

between 1573
2
and 1706

3
“sillabub” is still the

preferred form. But the
Oxford Dictionary’s

second

choice, “Syllabub”, comes more naturally to the pen
of one closely familiar with recipes and advertisements

of “glasses for syllabub”. The derivation and
definition also varied more than those of posset.

According to Baret (literally translating his Latin of

1573) a syllabub was “milk choked or killed with ale”.

To a few 18th-century lexicographers it was just a sort
of drink; to most a drink made by mixing milk, cider

or other acid liquor, sugar and spices. As in the case

of posset, an over-simplification.
Definitely syllabubs were associated only with light

pleasurable satisfaction of the appetite. Their alcoholic

authority was weaker than that of some simple possets

and other drinks. Humphrey’s
Yankee in England

(1815), expressing willingness to bet on a delicate
matter, would “wager a nip of toddy or venture a mug

of flip or a hull quart of sillybubs”. They were served

at meals, at parties and as refreshment at home and in
public places. They more than rivalled possets, enter-

ing the cookery books almost as soon, in greater varia-
tion of composition, and continuing in variety far

longer. They appeared regularly in bills of fare for

dinners and suppers from 1710 on.
4

Fancy possets, it

will be recalled, were included in only two cook-book
menus, both mid-18th century. Usually syllabubs

were recommended for spring and summer months –

April through August — as one of the sweets with the
second course or in the dessert. Syllabub had long
been a dessert delicacy, as lines from William King’s

(1708)
Art of Cookery
testify:

Night be resembled to a sickman’s dream . . .

The syllabubs come first, and soups come last.

The popularity of syllabub as refreshment must have
been on a par with our ice-cream and ice-cream soda,
and of great longevity. When the gallants in Sedley’s

Mulberry garden
(1668) met the ladies, as planned, in the

famous garden, one asked “Ladies will you do us the

honor to eat syllabubs?”
5

Later there was complaint

that “then they must be Home by 10 o’clock, have

syllabub and tarts brought into the Coach to ’em” .
6

About two hundred years later, syllabubs came into a

conversation between Lady de Courcy and Adolphus

Crosby in Trollope’s
The Small House at Allington:

” . . .and
so her girls are nice? / Very nice indeed. /

Play croquet I suppose and eat syllabubs on the

lawn?”

Of the one hundred and sixty-seven recipes

analyzed and compared, many were faithful repeats

and many were altered only by the slightest change in
ingredients or wording. The recipes from 1655
7
-1865

fell neatly into two groups: simple and fancy. In that

curds were produced in milk or cream by an acid

liquid the simplest syllabubs and simplest possets were
nearly identical. In fact a 1599
9
and 1623″ Spanish-

English dictionary gave the same Spanish word to a

posset
and a

syllabub.
About two hundred years later

Webster defined
sillabub
or

sillibub as
a posset made

with new milk. But syllabubs were not served warm or

hot as was posset and in no source was “new milk”
mentioned in connection with posset.

From dictionaries, cookery books and literary

references there seems no doubt that originally in

making syllabub the milk was actually milked from

cow or ewe into the seasoned liquor.” Minsheu

(1617) gives only this method in his definition of

syllabub. Directions for Digby’s plain syllabub

(antedating 1665)
12

instructed the maker “to milk the

Cow to the Verjuyce” in a bowl, take off the curd, and

beat it together with a little sack and sugar and cream,

put it in “your syllabub pot” and strew sugar on it

and “so send it to the table”. The practice evidently

persisted — if there was a cow on the premises –
though the real animal was not mentioned in recipes

again until 1723,
13
next in 1741

14
and from then on

until 1865
15
at least. After 1741 most simple syllabubs

were designated as “from the cow” or “under the

cow”.
Even if everyone wanting a syllabub had a cow it

would often have been inconvenient to run out to her

and milk into sweetened cyder, verjuice or sack in a
“neat rub’d pail” , ‘
6
bowl” or syllabub pot.
18

Naturally methods of making them without such effort

were devised. When prepared in the kitchen the milk

or cream was added “as hard as though milked”,”
either by a few spoonfuls at a time or poured from a

spouted vessel — coffeepot or teapot,
2
° or a wooden

cow “made for that purpose you may buy at the
turners” .
21
The earliest recipe studied (1655) was for

a plain syllabub made without benefit of milking:

cyder, sugar and nutmeg stirred well, cream added by

two or three spoonfuls at a time and sitrred softly, then
“let stand to made the curd”.
22

It was to be made in

a syllabub pot which, at that date, undoubtedly was of
earthenware or metal.
Standing
made the curd, which

probably was eaten before or after the liquid beneath

was drunk — as ice-cream is in an ice-cream soda.

The majority of syllabubs, like possets, were fancy,

called whip’d, everlasting and solid, and probably
evolved some time before the mid-17th century. The

earliest recipe found for the fancy variety, Sir

Theodore Mayerne’s of 1658,
23

called for a pint of
“pretty hot sack” spouted into a quart of “scalded

creame” (a simple syllabub) which was “let stand

overnight”. Before serving, sweetened thick cream
and a little sack were beaten to a froth which, as it

rose, was taken off, drained in a “cullender” and then

laid on the “sullibub” as high as possible. Perhaps

about the same time, certainly before 1665,
24

the

syllabub itself was whipped to a froth or sometimes

churned in a “pitcher to a jelly not butter”.
26
Usually

the drained froth was “laid in”
glasses
on top of the

“drink” which remained from the whisking, beating

or milling. By 1724
26
the froth was often laid on

sweetened wine such as Rhenish or claret instead of

the “drink”. Also, perhaps not before the 19th

century, the froth alone was used as a sweet.”
The name
“everlasting”
was used by Madame

Susanna Avery in 1688,
28
and

“solid”
by John Farley

in 1783,
29
for syllabubs always to stand overnight and

which would “keepe” more than a few hours. New
names may have given a new look to old familiars, for

in essentials they were the whip’d syllabubs of the 17th

century like Lady Middlesex’s (fig. 3) which also stood

overnight, and Ann Blencowe’s 1684 lemon syllabub,
which was “better for keeping two or three days and

will keep a week” .
3
° The solid syllabubs, name and

recipes, seemingly were favourites of the 19th-century

southern American ladies who sometimes made them
in a wide-mouthed bottle, shaking it ten minutes
before pouring the syllabub into glasses.
3
‘

More often than not it was the whip’t syllabub

which was included in desserts given in bills of fare,
though, of course, everlasting and solid qualified also.

Often the directions were to place the syllabubs among

the jellies in the centre of the table: syllabubs in glasses

were “proper to set on a salver amongst the jelly

glasses”.
32

Sometimes the eye-appeal and gaiety of a

festive dessert or entertainment were enhanced by
these syllabubs coloured with syrup of cloves or gilly
flowers or with saffron (1686),
33

strawberry juice

(1709),
34
raspberry juice (1723),

35
“cochineil or

spinage juice” (1747);
36

and the anticipation of exotic

flavour by the scent of “ambergreese” (1714), rose or

orange-flower water (1741)
37
or perfumed confits

(1738).
38

Cookery book evidence as to the vessels used in

preparing and serving syllabubs, while relatively

limited in comparison with the number of recipes, is
far more abundant than in the case of possets. It seems

very significant that whereas
posset-pot
or
pot
was

specified only seven times for posset, all before
1700

and as an alternative to basin, “syllabub pot” was

prescribed twelve times: four in the 17th-century

recipes, eight in the 18th — plain evidence that the

spouted pot continued in favour for syllabubs far
longer than for possets. The latest reference was in the
first American cook book, Amelia Simmons’ of 1796.

She gave an option: syllabub glasses or pot.
39
Further

enlightenment lies in the derivation of the word by

Henshaw as quoted by Johnson in his
Dictionary

(1755). The word
sillabub
was deduced from the Dutch

Sulle
(pipe) and
buych

(paunch) because “sillabubs are

commonly drunk through the spout out of a jug with

a large belly” (fig. 7). Evidently the spouted pot
functioned not only as a mixing vessel but also as a

communal drinking vessel for simple syllabubs. The

spouted pots of the 17th century were “either of earth;
of mettle according to the greatnesse and richnesse of

the person”. George Ravenscroft, inventor of glass of

lead, was making glass syllabub pots (fig. 5) in

1677.
40

The fancy varieties were prepared mainly in a

bason,
4

‘ earthenpan,
42
wooden bowl,” large china

bow1
44
or punch bow1;
45
and, excepting the simple

syllabubs which might be drunk from a communal
vessel, all syllabubs were put into individual glasses for

serving. Digby’s statement that “My Lady Middlesex
makes syllabubs for little glasses with spouts”

authenticates spouted glasses before 1665, the year he

died (cf. figs. 4-5). The types which most collectors call

a posset cup or pot must have been similar to those of
Lady Middlesex. Beside the generic
glasses, syllabub

glasses,”
and, in the late 18th century,
long glasses”

were mentioned. The last call to mind our
parfait

glasses. The only indication that fancy syllabubs were

sometimes served up at the table was in Mrs. Eaton’s

The Cook and Housekeeper’s Complete and Universal

Dictionary,
1823: solid syllabub could be sent to the

table in “the basin it was made in or put into custard

cups and teaspoones with it on a salver”. In Thorpe’s

list
50
syllabub glasses, large syllabub glasses and

syllabub pots were among the principal glass utensils
made between 1675 and 1695. Glass for syllabub

remained popular, “Whip-Sillibub glasses” being

advertised in Bristo1
5
‘ in 1725 and in Boston, Mass.

in 1729.
52

“Jelly and syllabub glasses” was a

common phrase in 18th-century advertisements. They
were plain, pattern-moulded in diamonds and ribbing,

cut and flowered (engraved), as were other articles of
glassware of the period. Stiegel advertised one- and
two-handled syllabub glasses made at his Manheim

glassworks, Pennsylvania. As Barrington Haynes
thought, the distinction between jelly and syllabub

glasses may have been that the latter were handled.

Still it is safe to say that whether manufacturers made

such a physical distinction between the glasses they
made for jellies and those for syllabubs, the housewife

would use either for either, in any vessel she pleased

if, to her, it seemed suited to the concoction and

attractive.

POSTCRIPT BY R. J. CHARLESTON
If I might be allowed to venture a few observations

on the subject of this paper, I would fervently echo

Miss McKearin’s closing remark. We are far too
prone to assume that the names of glasses are

immutable and precisely used in all contexts. In
reality, appellations probably changed with time, and

were not used with invariable precision.
In the most general terms, it will have been

observed that the distinction between possets and
syllabubs is tenuous and irregular, both being

essentially
milk or cream curdled by means of alcoholic

liquor — whether of barley, the apple or the grape.

Certain features appear
in the main

to be characteristic

of one or the other — thus, possets could be served

hot, syllabubs normally cold; syllabubs could be made
“under the cow”, possets not; etc. — but there is a

wide expanse of common ground. Nor are the
appellations “syllabub glass”, “syllabub pot”, etc. in

any way specific. Only when the word “spouted” is
used can one be sure what generic type of vessel is

referred to. One rather important reference was not

brought into Miss McKearin’s text. In a recondite

17th-century play entitled
Sir G. Goosecappe,

published

in 1607, mention is made of “Posset-Cuppes carv’d

with libberds faces and Lyons heads with spouts in
their mouths, to let out the posset ale”. These were

clearly in silver, the leopard’s or lion’s mask playing

the same role as in a fountain, holding the jet in its

mouth. It seems evident from this that spouted pots

were in use for drinking
possets
in the early years of the

17th century. Later this role seems to be transferred to

syllabubs, as appears from Sir Kenelm Digby’s

remark about Lady Middlesex’s recipe, and from the

unequivocal appearance of “sullibub” glasses in
Ravenscroft’s list of 1677, corresponding to the actual

surviving glasses with the raven seal (fig. 5). The

shape is to be seen unchanged nine years earlier in the
Greene correspondence (fig. 1). The direct evidence,

however, is very slight and the spouted glasses may

well have been called posset-glasses by some, as by

Randle Holme in his
Academie or Storehouse of Armory,

compiled between 1663 and 1682 (fig. 2). Here a
bellied footed pot with a pair of handles and a long

spout is referred to as “a posset pot, or a wassell cup

or a sallibube pott, haveing two handle, with a pipe on

the side . . ..” The shape is one usually found in large

vessels, and this perhaps suggests that they were made

for communal drinking, as the word “wassell cup”

would imply. The same was presumably true of the
large spouted pots in delftware and other forms of

pottery. We may recall Johnson’s definition of

“syllabub” as “commonly drunk through the spout

out of a jug with a large belly” (fig. 7), which
presumably reflects current practice in 1755, even if

Johnson’s etymology may be suspect.
Of jelly and syllabub glasses in the 18th century we

have already heard from Mr. Udall (see pp. above).

That there were distinctions seems to be borne out by
the fact that syllabubs in glasses were “proper to set on

a salver amongst the jelly glasses”; and that “jelly and

syllabub glasses” were distinguished in the 18th

to different people at different times we shall probably

century glass-sellers’ lists. Just what each name meant

never be able finally to unravel.

NOTES – PART I

1.
Howard Hershell Cotterell, “Old Pewter Porringers,

Caudle, Posset and Tasting Cups” Part I,
Apollo,
(Aug.

1928). In support of the statement that the term posset-

pot seems to have been abandoned in the 17th century,

Cotterell states that there is “no single mention of a

posset-pot or cup amongst the hundreds of entries in the
Middlesex Session Rolls of Elizabeth to James II. It

would be interesting to know whether syllabub pots or
spouted pots and cups were mentioned.

2.
The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelm Digbie, Kt.

Opened (1669).

3.
Baret,
An Avearlie or Triple Dictionary in English, Latin and

French
(1573); “ale or wine poured into hot milk” (free

translation of his Latin) – New Oxford English

Dictionary; Webster’s.

4.
Dawson,
The Good Huswifes Ievvel
(1587); Beeton,

Dictionary of Every Day Living
(1865).

5.
Minsheu,
Guide into Tongues

(1617).

6.
Salmon.
Dictionnaire Francois-Anglais

(1815).

7.
Baret, “poset ale thought good to make one sweate”;

Minsheu (1617); Markham,
The Englsh Huswife
(1615).

Before 1750 treacle-posset
(The Country Housewife’s

Family Companion,
1750) also was used, particularly

before going to bed, and as late as 1823 it was

recommended highly by Mrs. Mary Eaton
(The Cook or

Housekeeper’s Complete or Universal Dictionary,
1823)

because “children will take it freely”.

8.
Markham,
The English Huswife

(1615), recommends

dandelion in posset drink for single tertian ague; the

Countess of Kent,
A Choice Manuall or Rare and Select

Secrets in Physick and Chijruyerk
(2nd ed. 1653), added

“nine heads of carduus” as well as wheat flower and

gross pepper to her posset for ague. John Evelyn

recorded in his diary (Feb. 7, 1682) being helped by a

carduus posset to
avoid

an expected fit of the ague.

Perhaps he followed Lady Kent’s directions.

9.
Markham.

10.
Digby,

Choice and Experimental Recipes
(1668): such as

mercury sublimate for the King’s Evil.

11.
Dawson.

12.
Digby (1668).

13.
Henry Howard,

England’s Newest Way . . .
(1709, but not

1717 ed.): “Posset-drink with Mary gold flowers and
Harshorn” for the “small-pox and meazels”.

14.
Mary Kettilby,
A Collection of Reci pts
(1719). Posset-

drink was called for in five of her remedies, including

one for
Plurise or Shortness of Breath,
consisting of an

infusion of two ounces of flaxseed in a pint of posset-

drink.

15.
The Country Housewife’s Family Companion
(1750). The

original receit
for curing jaundice called for pimpernel

and shickweek stamped and strained into posset ale,

and, for fever, a treacle-posset on going to bed.

16.
Margaret Allingham Carter,
The Galantrys
(1943).

17.
Dawson.

18.
Macbeth,
Act
II, Sc.
II. In Marston’s
Westward Ho
(1607) Mistress Tenterhook proposed “Let’s set upon

our posset and so march to bed”.

19.
Samuel Pepys’
Diary,
Jan. 6, 1668.

20.
John Galt,
The Annals of the Parish
(1821).

21.
Minsheu’s 1617 Latin explanation of posset contains

the word “repotia”, that is, a banqueting with new

wedded folk, also joyful drinking at childbirth.

22.
Brand,
Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great

Britain,
states it was an ancient custom that “in the

evening of the wedding day before the company retired

a sack posset was eaten”.
Sack
because it was believed

to make a man lusty and sugar to make him kind.

“Eaten” is interesting here since the spoonmeat type of

posset seems to have evolved around 1700.

23.
Samuell Sewell,
Diary,
Dec. 3, 1717; May 12, 1719.

24.
Tobias Smollett,
Humphrey Clinker.

25.
The Receipt book of Mrs. Ann Blencowe, AD 1694.

26.
Digby (1669).

27.
J. Marston,
The Malcontent
(1604), Act II, Sc. 3:

” …Seven and thirty yolks of Barbary hens’ eggs,

eighteen spoonfuls and a half of the juice of cock-

sparrow bones; one ounce, three drams, four scruples,
and one quarter of the syrup of Ethiopian dates,

sweetened with three-quarters of a pound of pure
candied Indian eringos; strewed over with the powder

of pearl of America, amber of Cataia and lambstone of
Muscovia”.

28.
True Gentlewoman’s Delight
(1653).

29.
Kettilby (1719).

30.
Marmette,
The Perfect Cook

(1686).

31.
Ibid.

32.
Digby,
Closet. . .
(1669).

33.
Ibid.

34.
The Compleat Housewife
(1730).

35.
Hannah Glasse,
The Art of Cookery
(1747).

36.
Only six rules called for one or another of barley,

oatmeal, Naples biscuits or bread before 1750; thirty-

four afterwards. Of the seventy-three calling for eggs,

more than half appeared before 1750.

37.
Ann Peckham,
The Complete English Cook,

1767. Lemon,

orange or currant possets were among dishes for the
second course of dinner in July and August, and for

supper. Orange posset given by Mary Kettilby (1719

ed. repeated 1724) occurred frequently in other books
after 1726. Lemon posset was given by Elizabeth

Moxon
English Housewifery

(1749).

38.
Glasse (1747
et seq.).

39.
Moxon (1749).

40.
Peckham (1767).

41.
Country Housewife’s Family Companion
(1750).

42.
Merry Wives of Windsor:
Ford told Falstaff to be cheerful

for he “Shalt eat a posset tonight at my house”; Dame

Quickly, sending John Rugby to see if Dr. Caius was
returning home, said “Go and we’ll have a posset for

it soon at night, in faith at the latter end of a sea-coal

fire”. Pepys records on January 5, 1660, “Then my

wife and I, it being a great frost, went to Mrs. Jem in

expectation to eat a sack-posset, but Mr. Edwd. not

coming, it was put off”.
47.
48.
49.
Peckham (1767).

Haldenby,
Collection of Valuable Receipts
(1838).

F. Buckley,
A History of Old English Glass,
London

43.

Country Housewife’s Family Companion
(1750).

(1925), p. 149.

44.

Harrison,
The Housekeeper’s Pocketbook
(1738).

50.
W.A.

Thorpe,

“English

Glassware

the

17th
45.

Marmette,
The Perfect Cook
(1686).

century”, in Arthur Churchill Ltd.,
Old English Glass

46.

Moxon (1749).

(1937), pp. 13-22.

NOTES
–
PART II

1.
Phillips,
The new World of Words
(1706).

Books
(1829); the rule of whip’d syllabub ended with the

2.
Baret (1573).

remark that “of the thin that is left at the bottom you

3.
Phillips (1706).

may make a fine flummery”. The froth was made in a

4.
Patrick Lamb,
Royal Cookery; or the Compleat Court
–
Cook

chocolate mill.

(1710).
28.
Madame Susanna Avery,
Her Book
(1688).

5.
Act I, Sc. 3.

29.
John Farley,

The London Art of Cookery
(1783).

6.
Act IV, Sc. 1.

30.
The Receipt Book of Mrs. Ann Blencowe

(1694).

7.
Brook,
The Compleat Cook
(1655).

31.
The Carolina Housewife
(1847).

8.
Isabelle Beeton,
Dictionary of Every Day Living
(1865).

32.
John Farley,

The London Art of Cookery
(1797).

9.
Percevale,
A Dictionary in Spanish and English
(1599).

33.
Marmette (1686).

10.
Minsheu, Percevale’s enlarged (1623).

34.
Howard,
England’s Newest Way in all Sorts of Cookery

11.
Ben Jonson,
Sad Shepherd: “Strain

Ewe’s milk into your
(1709).

cyder syllabub and be drunk to him”; Sir Henry
35.

Nott (1723).

Wotton,
Description of Spring

(1605):
36.

Hannah Glasse (1747).

“Jone takes her neat-rub’d paile and now
37.

Family Magazine

(1741).

She trips to milk the sand-red cow
38.

Mrs. Sarah Harrison (1738).

Jone strokes a sillibub or twain.”
39.

Amelia Simmons,
American Cookery
(1796).

12.
Digby (died 1665),
Closet. . . . (1669).

40.
S. Young,
The History of the Worshipful Company of Glass

13.
John Nott,
The Cook’s and Confectioner’s Dictionary (1723).

Sellers of London,
London (1913), pp. 68-9.

14.
The Family Magazine
(1741).
41.
M. Kettilby (1719).

15.
I.
Beeton (1865).
42.
Hannah Glasse (1747).

16.
Wotton (see no. 11).
43.

William Gelleroy,
The London Cook
(1762).

17.
Digby (1669).
44.
The British.Housewife

(1770).

18.
Brook (1655 – see no. 7).

45.
John Farley (1783).

19.
Ibid.
46.

John Nott (1723) and many others.

20.
Hannah Glasse (1747).
47.

Middleton,
Five Hundred New Receipts. . ..
revised by

21.
Nott (1723).
Howard (1734).

22.
Brook (1655).

48.
John Farley (1783).

23.
Sir T. Mayerne,

Archimagrius Anglo
–
Gallicus

(1658).

49.
John Farley (1798).

24.
Digby (1669 – see note 12).

50.
See Part I, p. 59.

25.
Marmette,
The Perfect Cook
(1686).

51.
F. Buckley,
A History of Old English Glass,

London

26.
The Court Cookery
(1724).
(1925), p. 145.

27.
Henderson,
Modern Domestic Cookery and Useful Receipt

52.
N.E. Journal,
24 January, 1731.

Figure 1. Drawing

accompanying an order

dated 28 August, 1668,

from the London glass-seller

John Greene to his Venetian

supplier, Alvise Morelli.
Ms. in the British Library.

Figure 2. Illustration from
Randle Holme’s
An

Academie or Storehouse

of Armory and Blazon
(Ms. c.1663-82)

. . a posses pott, or a

wassell cup, or a sallibube

pott, haveing 2 handles, with

a pipe on the side… ”

(
I
3S)

wine and Egg:, and let it be hot. Then put In
the Cream billing from the fire, pour it on high,

but iiir it not ; cover it with a dill), and when it

is fettled, Chew on the top a little fine Sugar
mingled wch three grains of Ambergreece, and

one grain of Musk, and lave it up.

Syilabse6.

My Lady
Middlefex
makes Syllabubs for little

Clacks with (pouts, thus. Take 3 pints of fwcec

Cream, one of quick white wine ( or Rhenifli)

and a good wine glafsful ( better the ; of
a

p nt ) of Sack
:
mingle with them about three

quarters of a pound of fine Sugar in Powder.
Brat all thefe together with a whisk, till all ap-

peareth converted into froth. Then pour it

into your little Syllabub glaffes , and let them

Rand all night. The next day the Curd

thick and firm above, and the drink clear under

ir. I conceive it may do well, to put into each

glals ( when you pour the liquor into it )
a

prig of R ofemary
a
little bruited, or
a
I.ttle

Limo a- peel

or fome fuch Eh rig to quicken

the tulle ; or sire Amber fugar, or fpirit of Cin-

namon, or of LigniEn.Caffix; or Nutmegs, or
Mace, or Cloves, a very little.

A pod DO;
cf Crum.

Boil a quart of good Cream with
flicks
of

Cinnamon and quartered Nutmeg and Sugar

K 4

Figure 3. Syllabub recipe from
The Closet of the

Eminently Learned Sir Kendal Digbie, Kt Opened

(1669).

Figure 4. Three
passel-pots, soda-glass, from the Wentworth

Woodhouse “hoard”, c.1670. Present owners unknown.

Figure 5. Two posset-pots, uncrizzled lead-glass, with the seal of George Ravenscroft, from the Wentworth Woodhouse “hoard”. Probably
London (Savoy glasshouse); about 1680. H.3 .% and 3 /gin. (8.2 and 8.5cm.); (a) Corning Museum of Glass, (b) Toledo Museum of Art,
Ohio.

Figure 6. Six spouted glasses; (a) = Fig. 5, a, the remainder late 17th/early 18th century. H.3%2 to 8
VI
in. (8.8 to 20.7cm.). Corning

Museum of Glass.

Figure 7. Large covered spouted pot, early 18th century. H. with

cover 9 V2in. (24cm.). Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford. Photo:
Hawkley Studio Associates, Ltd.
Figure 8. Spouted glass, early 18th century. H. 4/

2
in. (11.3cm.)

E. T. Udall, Esq. Photo: John Towse.

JACOBITE GLASSES AND THEIR INSCRIPTIONS:

SOME INTERPRETATIONS

by F. J. Lelieyre

A Paper read to the Circle on 17 February, 1983

In the correspondence that led to this honour I have
tonight of speaking to the Circle, one of Mr.

Charleston’s letters contained a sentence around

which I feel I should form my preface. He wrote:
`There is not a flower that blows (assuming it can be

identified in the first place) which has not been laid
under contribution as a Jacobite symbol.’ After that it

seems, if not quite an impudence, at leapt a matter of
hazard to try to add to the volume of comment on

Jacobite arcana: true, this talk will not be concerned

directly with symbols, but with words that Jacobites
chose to have engraved on their glasses. At best,
though, that may be thought not so much a defence as

a plea in mitigation.
As glasses are by custom so closely associated with

toasts and pledges, it is not surprising that appropriate

sentiments had been inscribed on them for centuries
before the Jacobites came on the scene. The range of

those sentiments includes the convivial — ‘Cheer up

and enjoy yourself” on a Syrian beaker of the first

century A.D. in the Fitzwilliam Museum; expressions

of personal attachment in friendship or love, like the

tender enamelled message ‘le svis a vovs’ on a 16th

century goblet in the British Museum; or professions

of allegiance in the public sphere, such as ‘God save

Quyne Elisabeth’ on the Prescot Verzelini goblet or
`God bless King Charles the Second’ on the Exeter

flute. The tradition of heraldic decoration on glass is

also relevant to our theme. An achievement of arms

may allude to the bearer’s name or it may carry an

emblematic charge associated with his family, as a rose
is said long to have been with the Stuarts. In addition,

a written motto may be displayed expressing an

attitude or ideal, sometimes with a punning reference
to the family name. The emblem, the word and the

cryptic element, operating in either emblem or word,
are at the heart of Jacobite engraving also.

Something else common to herald and Jacobite is

the use of Latin, though neither used it exclusively.

Apart from words from the Jacobite hymn,

inscriptions in English on Jacobite glass include

`Success to the Society’; ‘God bless the Prince’; ‘Long

live P C’; ‘Charles ye great Britannia’s Prince’ and

words from the 37th Psalm ‘Though he fall, he shall
not utterly be cast down’. As for Latin, it is not at all

surprising to find the language in an 18th century

context: it was used in legal documents, seals, medals,

coins, monumental and architectural inscriptions and
in many other ways: but is there a reason why Latin

is so dominant on Jacobite glass?

In so far as the Jacobite movement had Roman

Catholic associations, Latin is appropriate enough:

but those associations did not hold for the majority in
England or for the greater part of the Scots who

marched to Derby in ’45: so ecclesiastical attachment

seems likely to have had little enough influence on the

choice of language.
The Scottish adherents to the cause would have

been no strangers to Latin, if they had passed through

the grammar schools of their country. In school, if

they were caught and denounced by the appointed
informers, they were beaten for speaking anything but
Latin in class or in private. In Scottish universities

lectures were delivered in Latin and H.G. Graham in
The Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century

comments that ‘even in the middle of the century
Edinburgh professors of philosophy, law, and divinity

persisted in their lumbering Latin to somnolent

students’.’ It is hard to believe that the enthusiasm
for Latin aroused by these educational methods was of

such degree that it spread by infection from the Scots

throughout the Jacobite cause.
If one could give open expression in the honesty of

the English language to impeccable sentiments such as
`The Glorious Memory of King William’ or ‘George

and Liberty’ (to say nothing of that political
cri de coeur

`No excise’, a commanding proposition if ever there

was one), does it follow that contrary opinions
required the concealment of a foreign tongue?

Certainly the penalties inflicted on Jacobites could be

savage. They died in gaols or in gaol-ships awaiting
trial. Some were beheaded, some hanged, drawn and

quartered, or otherwise executed, some were flogged.

Estates were confiscated, homes burned. There were

also many deportations, usually for indentured service

on West Indian plantations or in America. Yet there
were pardons, notably under the Act of Grace after the

’15 and the Bill of Pardon in ’47. Estates confiscated

from one member of a family sometimes found their

way into the keeping of another and so were not wholly

lost. There were acquittals too and retribution could

be uneven in its incidence: for example, the Rev.
Robert Patten, a contemporary historian of the ’15,

comments that a Lancashire Jacobite, Edward

Tildesley, was acquitted, `tho’ it was proved he had a

Troop, and entered Preston at the Head of it with his

Sword drawn. But his Sword had a Silver Handle’ .

Not surprisingly the greatest danger seems to have

attended people of standing, like the Earls of

Derwentwater or, perhaps, Lord Lovat, and those of
no worldly importance. The explanation of these

disparities probably lies in the division of the nation.

Perhaps we must allow for a little coat-trailing by

Samuel Johnson when he said that ‘if England were

fairly polled, the present King would be sent away

tonight’, just as we detect the archness that can affect
intellectual gentlemen in their later middle years when

Johnson took a young lady by the hand and said ‘My
dear, I hope you are a Jacobite’.
3
Nevertheless, the

widespread disturbance that preceded the ’15 and the

continuation of ferment up to the ’45 indicate how

hard it was for people to decide which regime
represented the lesser evil. In glass, perhaps an

ambiguous engraved monogram or equivocation

between word and symbol sometimes arose from
hedged rather than disguised loyalty. One recalls R.L.

Stevenson’s
The Master of Ballantrae,
in which the Durk

family agreed to steer a middle course, one son going

forth to strike a blow for King James and the other

staying at home to keep in favour with King George,
the choice resting on the toss of a coin. Fiction in this

case represents fact, for there was hedging or
uncertainty or indifference, as well as the espousal of

either cause.
4
Faced with division, Whig policy,

outside the hour of crisis itself, had to be to contain

and exhaust disaffection with the minimum of open

provocation and, above all, to avoid creating public

sympathy for martyrs.
So owning a glass with Jacobite cryptoglyphs on it

was not perhaps always as perilous as the owner may
have felt it to be; and as for using Latin rather than

English as a security measure, whom would that have

deceived? Not,- presumably, a Hanoverian who could
translate aurea libertas’ — ‘golden (is) freedom’ –

engraved above the white horse on his own glass. It

seems sanguine too to hope that Latin would perplex

an informer about the nature of any glass that also
carried, as many did, well-recognised emblems like the
rose or the oak tree or oak leaf, let alone a portrait.

Still, the use of Latin may have given the master of the

house some feeling of being privy to mysteries and it
may have puzzled a potentially disloyal but not very

bright servant.
The historic proconsular role of Latin as, broadly

speaking, a language of public occasion and record has
already been mentioned. Apart from that, the

dominance of Latin on Jacobite glass is due in great

measure to its importance as a component of culture
in an age that termed itself and is termed Augustan.
In the universities the first half of the century was not

a time of great scholarly achievement in classics,

Richard Bentley apart, and Samuel Johnson spoke of

the Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge at the
start of the century as `unoculus inter caecos’ — ‘a

one-eyed man among the blind’.
3
However, Robert

Greene, a tutor at Clare College, Cambridge,

significantly remarks in an educational pamphlet he
published in 1707 that ‘University Studies . . . always

suppose Classicks already taught’ .
6

It was the tutors

to the nobility and the schools that principally

maintained the tradition, both the great and historic

schools and the now growing number of private or

endowed schools. For some pupils at least classical

studies came fully alive, if fiction can properly be
offered in evidence. Here from
Tristram Shandy
is My

Uncle Toby: ‘When we read over the siege of
Troy,

which lasted ten years and eight months — though

with such a train of artillery as we had at
Namur,
the

town might have been carried in a week — was I not
as much concerned for the destruction of
Greeks

and

Trojans as
any boy of the school? Had I not three

strokes of the ferula given me, two on my right hand,
and one on my left, for calling
Helena
a bitch for it? Did

any one of you shed more tears for
Hector?
And when

king
Priam
came to the camp to beg his body, and

returned weeping back to
Troy

without it — you know,

brother, I could not eat my dinner.’?

If however fiction is inadmissible and we need a

primary source of evidence from fact, there can hardly

be a better indicator of the place of Latin or, more

specifically, of Latin poetry, which has an important

place in Jacobite inscriptions, than the list of those who

subscribed in advance to Michael Maittaire’s
Opera et

Fragmenta Veterum Poetarum Latinorum.
This pioneer

work in two folio volumes was a collection of the whole

of Latin poetry, pre-classical, classical and post-
classical, with a great deal of later Christian poetry up

to the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. It was published
in London in 1713 and, as the subscribers’ list shows,

clearly no home should have been without one. The
list includes the names of nine dukes, two marquises,
twenty-four earls, five viscounts and twenty barons, to

say nothing of the dedicatee, Prince Eugene, on the
one hand, and smaller fry on the other: but nobility in

itself is less remarkable than the importance to their

time of the three hundred and twenty or so subscribers

to this corpus of Latin poetry. For example, the
administration of Townshend, formed in 1714, the

year after publication, had nineteen members, of

whom nine subscribed to the corpus, and that is
typical of any administration formed in the reigns of

Anne or George I. Not all subscribers, though, looked
with favour on the House of Hanover: among those

associated with the Jacobite cause are George
Granville, Lord Lansdowne; the Marquis of Powis;

the Earl of Orrery; Lord North; William Shippen;

George Lockhart of Carnwath; Sir William

Wyndham. The list shows the law strongly
represented in number and in dignity, as are the

Church, medicine and science, the universities and

schools. Names from the world of letters include

Addison, Arbuthnot, Ambrose Philips, Prior,
Southerne, Steele, Swift, Vanbrugh and, if he belongs

here, the Rev. Isaac Watts. There are many other

names of importance among Maittaire’s subscribers:
perhaps we should single out Sir Godfrey Kneller in
tribute to his famous portrait of two drinking glasses

with drawn funnel bowls on baluster stems against a

decorative background formed by the first and second
Dukes of Newcastle: but we can sum up the general

position in the words of G.M. Trevelyan:
‘Noblesse

obliged every one who was proud of his country home
to have a large library and to fill its shelves with the

best authors, ancient and modern. Nor did the owner

and his guests leave them unread, as is proved by the
copious fragments of Virgil and Horace, Shakespear

and Milton that they deftly threw at each other’s heads
in Parliament, in conversation and in their private

correspondence.’
8
If I have lingered on this point, it

is because I believe that an insight into some Jacobite

inscriptions can be gained by crediting those who

chose them with the degree of familiarity with the
Latin poets that Trevelyan suggests.

However, not all Latin Jacobite inscriptions trail

literary associations with them. It would make this talk

even longer than it may already seem to run through

every inscription, so I have gathered, without hope of

completeness, the inscriptions I have seen on glasses or

in photographs or have found recorded in books or

articles. That list with a few comments forms an

appendix to this talk. The examples to be found there

are for the most part single words or short phrases with
no significant source or context, except for
Fiat:
the

meaning they convey comes wholly from within them.

There remains a group of inscriptions which can be

identified as actual quotations from classical authors.

When such quotations are used, it should be assumed

that they were chosen for their aptness by the designer

of the glass or the individual or club commissioning
the design. Those who decided on these attributable

inscriptions will be seen, I hope, to have shown the

sensitivity to context that befits men of the Augustan
age.

The first is ‘reddas incolumem’ — `(may you)

restore unharmed’: it comes from Horace
Odes
1.3.9.

In itself ‘restore unharmed’ seems, and indeed is,
fairly easy to understand as a Jacobite sentiment, but

it provides a good example of how context adds to the

meaning of the words that actually appear on the glass.

The ode is addressed to a ship in which Virgil, who
was a close and revered friend of Horace, is crossing

the sea. The poem uses a metaphor drawn from what
in today’s terminology we should prosaically call bank

safe deposit. Something very valuable has been
entrusted for safekeeping to the ship: the ship must
return that intact. When the words ‘reddas

incolumem’ are transferred to a Jacobite glass, what
do they carry over from their Horatian background to

add to their intrinsic meaning? They imply the deep

concern and devotion expressed in the original — ‘my
soul’s half’ translates the Horatian phrase next
following our own — and they introduce literally a
new element by indicating that the return of the one

so highly prized will involve crossing the water by

ship. We can compare a Jacobite medal of 1752
showing a ship and carrying an inscription in Latin

meaning ‘0 ship long awaited’ :
83

more remotely we

are reminded of the nautical compass used as a

decorative symbol on some Jacobite glasses.
The next quotation accompanies a portrait

engraving of Charles Edward on a tumbler in the

Royal Scottish Museum. It runs ‘everso missus

succurrere seclo C.P.R.’: the words represented by

the initials would be ‘Carolus princeps redeat’ and,
granted some licence with the scansion of
Carolus,
they

may continue the hexameter metre in which the
preceding words are set.” The whole sentence would

mean ‘sent to help a ruined age, may Prince Charles

come back’. This inscription is built round a direct

quotation from near the end of the first book of
Virgil’s
Georgics.

The
Georgics is
a poem describing

and, in the best sense, glorifying life on the land: but

our quotation comes in a digression of fifty lines from

the theme proper. Briefly, that passage refers to the
unnatural and portentous loss of the older Caesar,

Julius, and the civil war that followed. It prays that the
gods, including Romulus, one of the deified ancestors

of the Julian family, should forbear for a while to add

Augustus to their number and should suffer the young

prince to restore a ruined age, ‘everso succurrere

saeclo’, the words common to Virgil and our

inscription. Clearly the
Georgics

passage is beautifully

apt from the Jacobite point of view. The older Caesar

equates with the Old Pretender, the civil wars are

common to both ages, while for modern and ancient

alike the hopes of a new era lie with the young prince.
If the implications of both divine origin and future

divine status for Augustus are not strictly applicable to

the Stuarts, they are not out of keeping with ideas of

the Divine Right of Kings or with a quasi-Messianic

concept, expressed in our inscription by the word

missus,
‘sent’ to help a ruined age. As in the quotation

from Horace, context enhances the message of the

words actually presented on the glass.

No less skilfully chosen for the appropriateness of its

context is the inscription ‘hic vir, hic est’ — ‘this is the

man (or ‘hero’), this is he’ — which is a direct

quotation from the sixth book of Virgil’s
Aeneid,

line

791. The story of the
Aeneid
belongs to the period that

immediately followed the fall of Troy, some three

centuries before Rome’s legendary foundation in 753
B.C. Aeneas escapes from Troy with a group of his

followers and under divine, if somewhat imprecise,

guidance reaches Italy. Here he is to settle and

through his descendants in course of time to bring

about the foundation of Rome and its growth to

empire: but even in Italy danger and fighting have to
be faced. Aeneas is strengthened in his mission by

being privileged to descend, while still living, into the

underworld, where he is given insight into the cosmic
process and to a limited extent into the future.

Revelation reaches its climax when Aeneas meets his

dead father, who is reviewing the spirits of those

destined to live again in the world above and to play
their part in creating the glory of Rome. Virgil
ordered this procession of great Romans-to-be with

considerable care. It is not in simple chronological

sequence, but passes from the generations nearest to

Aeneas down to Romulus, in legend the founder of
Rome, semi-divine in life and deified after translation

from life. We then pass directly to Julius Caesar, of the

same lineage and also destined to become a god. Then

comes the very dramatic introduction of Augustus

Caesar —

vir, hic est’ — this is the man, this is

he, Augustus Caesar, whom you have often heard

promised unto you, son of a god, who will found a

golden age again in Italy and extend our dominion to
the ends of the earth. After an extended tribute to

Augustus Virgil resumes chronological order,
presenting a succession of great figures from Roman

history. By this means Virgil contrives to place

Augustus in the centre of the pageant of history and in

dealing with the later figures to make a delicate and
regretful reference to the civil wars that brought and

maintained the power of Julius and his heir Augustus

Caesar. Our inscription ‘Ilk vir, hic est’, if read

without reference to its context, may just convey

something of the dramatic quality of the original, but
attention to the context is needed to perceive the fuller
message that the words convey, the affirmation of
royalty as a divine heritage and the assurance of

national happiness after the cause has been victorious

in the civil struggle.
In a paper to this Circle Captain Horridge

suggested that the real significance of our phrase had
been overlooked and that ‘this is the man, this is he’

meant that Charles, not James, had become the key

figure.’
2
In terms of historical reality that is right, but

perhaps we should be cautious with an interpretation

that implies or emphasizes any superseding of James.

Stuart concepts of kingship may be against that and it

could be a difficulty that this passage from Virgil is
also used on a medal, admittedly from an earlier date,
1708, to refer by name to James.’
3

In translation it

runs: ‘This is the man, this is he, whom often you have

heard promised unto you, James — a Caesar — son

of a god, who will bring back again for the Scots a

golden age.’ Here is James, dressed in the imperial

purple of Augustus and even acquiring divine

parentage.
Understanding of the Virgilian background is
essential also to the interpretation of the inscription

‘Turno tempus erit’ — ‘for Turnus there shall be a
time’ — quoted from
Aeneid
10.503. Turnus was an

Italian warrior prince, and given these words in

isolation the reader could hardly be blamed for

supposing their intended message to be that the day of
the Stuart prince would come: but that is certainly

wrong. It would equate Charles Edward with Turnus,

who is the savage and impetuous loser in the struggle

with Aeneas for mastery in Italy. The context shows
the meaning of the quotation to be that an hour was

coming for Turnus when he would regret having killed

and despoiled the young son of an ally of Aeneas; for
men are blind to the future in their moment of victory.

That prophetic aside by Virgil is to be justified in the
event. In his final single combat with Turnus Aeneas
was minded to spare his defeated opponent; but he
killed him when he saw the sword-belt worn by

Turnus and earlier taken by him from the slain
youngster. Turnus stands therefore for a Hanoverian,
probably Cumberland, and the message of the

inscription is that the savage triumph, which for the
time being the enemy of the Jacobite cause enjoys, will

change in the end to defeat and retribution. If the
representation of Cumberland by Turnus is accepted,

it gives a
terminus ante quem
for dating glasses bearing

this inscription.
Our final quotation `audentior ibo’ — ‘I shall go

with greater daring’ — has some intriguing features.

The words are always accompanied by an engraved
portrait of Charles Edward and we have two possible

sources for them. In the exact form quoted they are
found in
Aeneid
9.291. This occurs in a passage where

two warriors, Nisus and the young Euryalus,

volunteer to break through enemy lines on behalf of
the beleaguered main force of Trojans in order to
reach Aeneas, who is away on a diplomatic mission.

The only request made by Euryalus is that, if he

should die, his aged mother would be cared for: then
he would go with greater daring to meet all hazards.

The fact that the actual words `audentior ibo’ are

spoken by Euryalus makes it reasonable to begin by

supposing that ‘this is the source passage from which

our quotation derives. We may then just about accept
the equation of James with the aged mother, though

doubt begins to rise; but the principal difficulty is
Euryalus himself. On the sortie he descends to reckless

blood-lust, becomes separated from Nisus, panics and

consequently meets his own death as well as causing

that of his companion. Of course, there may be
historians who would say that, dying apart, most of

that fits Charles Edward all too well, but the glasses

were engraved for Jacobite supporters, not for

historians with the unfair endowment of hindsight.
Since our other quotations have been chosen so very
aptly, it seems better to look elsewhere for the source,

especially as the repetition or near-repetition of

phrases is a feature of Virgilian style.

A more apposite context is provided by the sixth

book of the
Aeneid,
which begins with the arrival of

Aeneas in Italy. He goes to consult the prophetic
Sibyl, who goes into the customary trance of

inspiration. She foretells the grim fighting that is still

in store, but urges Aeneas not to give in to affliction,

sed contra audentior ito’ — ‘but go forth against it

with greater daring’ (95). In the last two words of the

Latin only one letter differs from the inscription: ‘ito’,

imperative — go. — becoming ‘ibo’, future — ‘I

shall go’. It has been suggested that the change arose

accidentally from a misreading by the engraver of the

written instruction given to him,
14
but that requires

us to relate all examples of this not uncommon

inscription to one source and to assume further that
the mistake always went uncorrected. It seems a

sufficient explanation of the change that a portrait of
Charles Edward always accompanies the inscription:
the subject of the portrait speaks in his own person and

so requires the altered version of the quotation. Indeed
one could argue that while a prophetess in mid-trance

may speak literally as the spirit moves her, it would

seem less than respectful for a Jacobite to bid his
prince and leader to proceed with greater courage: but

whether that is so or not, to regard `audentior ibo’ as

taken from the Sibyl passage gives a wholly acceptable

equation of the Jacobite prince with the Trojan leader,

who is of royal blood and more and who must similarly
face war and misfortune. Incidentally, these words are

not found only on glass. The British Museum has a

delftware punchbowl of about 1749, with a full-length

representation of Charles Edward, flanked by
`audentior ibo’ on one side and ‘All or none’ on the

other. The English motto probably casts no light on

the Latin, though it can be said that Aeneas would
have been more in an ‘all or none’ position than

Euryalus. Attempts to associate
ibo
with

bibo —
‘I

drink’ — seem to me grotesque.
There is a curious circumstance concerning this

inscription which has still to be mentioned. If we take

the whole phrase from
Aeneid

6.95, but with the change

to
ibo,
we get sed contra audentior ibo’ and if we try

that out as an anagram, we get ‘redeat lacobus

donnitor’. The first two words are old friends — ‘may

James return’ — but the last does not exist. However

Webster’s Third International Dictionary of the English

Language
in its entry under the letter M indicates that

in a documentary formula while NN, standing for
`names’, can be used as a stopgap to be replaced in a

particular instance by the actual names of the
individual concerned, the letter M can be substituted
for NN. That is no surprise to anyone who has learned

the catechism of the Church of England: ‘What is your
name?
Answer.
N. or M.’, where N represents a single

name and M replaces NN to represent the plural. So

if we operate within that convention, substituting M

for NN in
donnitor,
we get
domitor
and our anagram

means ‘may James return as vanquisher’. So was it

partly to provide the B needed for
Iacobus
that
ito
was

changed to
ibo,

and have we stumbled upon a Jacobite

cryptogram? A contra-indication is that the glasses

themselves carry only the two words ‘audentior ibo’,
not the four that make up the altered Virgilian phrase

necessary to the anagram; and one can be sceptical

about the substitution of M for NN. On the other
hand that substitution was possible in documentary
formulae, and if a wineglass is not a document, some

latitude can be allowed to someone endeavouring to

find a passage that is both appropriate in itself and

capable of being re-assembled to form a hidden

message. The anagram would not be out of place

added to the range of Jacobite arcana, including an

acrostic formed by the names of flowers on a set of
glasses, suggested by J.M. Bacon in a
Country Life

article in 1947.’
5
The question is whether it is harder

to believe in the anagram or in the coincidence that a

latent Jacobite sentiment is present by chance.
Fortunately we do not need to take a decision on

that matter in
–
order to derive ‘audentior ibo’ from the

Sibyl’s exhortation to Aeneas rather than from the
words of Euryalus. Whatever verdict history may have

passed on the Young Pretender, no adherent to the

Stuart cause would have wished to see engraved on his

glass words fraught with ill omen if they were to be

attributed to an immature and doomed minor Trojan
warrior. Although common sense warns us that not all

who read understood, we are most likely to reach a

correct interpretation of this and the preceding
quotations if we begin by assuming that the new

Augustans who chose them knew their Virgil and

Horace and were alive to the implications of context.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank Miss Halina Grubert, Curator, The

Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, and Mr. John Hurst,
Librarian, The New University of Ulster.

APPENDIX

AB OBICE MAJOR
`Greater from the check’:
obex

means, according to

context, ‘barrier’, ‘dam’. Probably based on Ovid
Metamorphoses
3.571, ab obice saevior ibat’ — ‘went

raging all the more from the obstruction’ — describing

a river, smooth where unchecked, but wild and

foaming where blocked by rocks and timber. Ovid’s

saevior —
‘more savage’ — may have been changed

either as being uncomplimentary applied to a person

or through misquotation from memory. Hughes’s
version — ‘the great often fall’ — is off the mark.
16

CAELUM NON ANIMUM MUTANT QUI TRANS

MARE CURRUNT

`They change clime, not heart, who speed across the

sea’: Horace
(Epistles
1.11.27) simply warns that the

neurotic do not escape neurosis by a change of scene:

his moralisation takes on another meaning in reference
to Jacobite exiles.

COGNOSCUNT ME MEI

‘My own recognise me’: the words occur under an

unnamed portrait of James Francis Stuart on a BM

glass (86,11-13,2). We can exclude possible echoes of

John 1.10-11, ‘the world knew him not’, ‘his own

received him not’, for while James was likened to

Moses, Joseph and David, piety would surely have
permitted nothing further.
17
As portraits of rulers are

usually labelled or otherwise identified, the inscription
probably relates to the portrait’s anonymity, serving

also as a leader’s acknowledgment of loyalty to him.

(C f.
Reddite)

FIAT

`May
it come to pass’: the word has a double

significance. It is a prayer for the restoration of the
Stuarts: it is also the Latin equivalent of
Amen,
derived

through Greek from Hebrew, meaning ‘may it be so’,

and, in an asseverative sense, also translated ‘verily’ in
the Authorised Version of the New Testament. The

essence of this was noted by Mrs. Steevenson in the

eleventh paper read to the Circle.
Fiat
represents the

concluding
Amen

of the Jacobite hymn and the

sentiments of the entire hymn. Sir Arnold Fleming

interpreted the word as ‘the formal royal accession to

do something, in this case to drink to the cause’, but

that seems a forced explanation, arguing back from

English usage whereby
fiat

means the sanction of an

authority.’
8

FLOREAT

`May
it flower (flourish)’: the word can be literal,

applying to the rose or other floral symbol, or
metaphorical, referring to the fortunes of the cause.

The word, as a subjunctive, could have a conditional

force and mean `(the cause) would flourish’, which is
Fleming’s interpretation: but sense requires a wish to

be expressed. Any suggestion of the hypothetical is out

of place.

PREMIUM VIRTUTIS
`Reward of valour’ — occurs on the same glass as

`cognoscunt ‘ above, surmounted by a crown,

which would appear to be valour’s reward. Hughes

explains the phrase as being probably inscribed on

drinking glasses presented to Jacobites as a reward ‘for
some glorious action’ in the ’45. Francis also refers to

presentation goblets, but neither writer quotes

evidence.°

PRO PATRIA
`For the sake of the Country’, a sentiment open to use

by either side; but the Jacobite would think of Stuart

restoration in the terms of his hymn: ‘It is the only

thing / Can save the Nation.’ Pro patria’ occurs in
Horace
Odes

3.2.13, but had become a tag too well

worn for the source to be significant.

RADIAT
`It shines’: self-explanatory when used with an

engraved star, whatever the symbolic meaning given

to that. As variants Hughes records `radiete’ and

`radeat’, but there seems to have been a more general

confusion between radiat’ , ‘reddite’, ‘redeat’ and
`redi’.

REDDITE
`Restore’, ‘give back’ (imperative, plural). In this

form the inscription represents a call for the crown to

be restored to the Stuarts. W.A. Thorpe in the eighth

paper to the Circle records a fuller version: ‘reddite

cuius est cuique suum’ — ‘restore his own to each man
whose it is’ — and a similar form of words is quoted

by Fleming.” Light is thrown on this by a Jacobite

medal of 1708 carrying a portrait of James,
unidentified, but with ‘cuius est’ replacing the usual

name and titles.
21

If, as in the Vulgate, the words

`cuius est’ are taken as interrogative — ‘Whose is this

image . ?’ (Matt. 22.20-21; Mark 12.16-17) they

invite the beholder to identify the portrait. ‘Reddite’

also comes from this passage in the Vulgate –
‘Render unto Caesar . ‘ — and the word appears on

the reverse of this medal with an outline of the British

Isles, which are clearly the things that are James’s.

The sentence recorded by Thorpe seems to have been
built up around the Vulgate phrases to give an
unexceptionable generalisation which nevertheless has

Jacobite implications.

REDEAT
`May he return’ — self-explanatory.

REDI

`Return’, ‘come back’ — the imperative form of the

previous word and again self-explanatory. G.R.

Francis, followed by Hughes, took the word as a

contraction of
redii —
‘I have returned’ — but Latin

and sense are against that.
22

Charles Edward may

have made fleeting returns to Britain, but such

clandestine visits hardly seem a matter for

commemoration. ‘Rede’ on a Victoria and Albert

glass is a simple mis-spelling.

REVIRESCIT
`It grows green again’, ‘it shoots again’ — as with

`floreat’, the literal sense applies to the oak, an

accepted badge of the Stuarts, the metaphorical sense

denotes the resurgent life of the Jacobite movement.
`Reverescie is a mis-spelling. (A Jacobite medal has

`revirescee, by design or by accident the correct form

of the future tense — ‘it will grow green again’.)

TEMPORA MUTANTUR ET NOS MUTAMUR IN

ILL’S

`The times change and we change in them’ — the

correct form of these words: the glass has ‘mudantur’

in error for both ‘inutantur’ and ‘mutamue. The

verse is of unknown authorship, but is a variant of

`omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis’ — ‘All

things change and we change within them’ –
attributed to the 9th century emperor Lothar. The

more frequently quoted version with ‘tempora’ has a

melancholy appropriateness to the withering White

Rose.

NOTES

1.
5th edn., London (1969), pp.443, 455.

11.

2.
The History of the Late Rebellion,
2nd edn., London

(1717), vol. 1, p. 149.

3.
J. Boswell,
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.,
Dent, 12.

London (1931), vol. 1, p. 267; vol. 2, p. 115.

4.
For example, John Murray, Duke of Atholl, regarded 13.

as sympathetic to the Jacobite cause in 1707, took the 14.
Hanoverian part in the ’15, while his brother and his

own sons came out with the Earl of Mar.

15.

5.
Boswell, vol. 2, p. 329.

6.
Quoted in M.L. Clarke,

Classical Education in Britain,

16.

1500-1900,
Cambridge (1959), p. 70.

7.
Bk. 6, ch. 32.

17.

8.
British History in the 19th Century,

London (1922), p. 21.

9.
‘Incolumem’ is often wrongly written as Incolumen’. 18.

G.B. Hughes,
English, Scottish and Irish Table Glass,

19.

London (1956), p. 248, appears to confuse ‘reddas’ — 20.

`give back’ — with ‘redeas’ — `go back’.

21.

10.
G.R. Francis,
Old English Drinking Glasses,

London 22.

(1926), Pl. LXVI, H.
The first two syllables of ‘Carolus’ would have to be

scanned as long: the Carolingian poets treated them as

short.
`The Rose and Emblems on Jacobite Drinking Glasses’,

Gtass Circle Papers
56.

Francis, Pl. LXII, C.

G. Savage,
Glass and Glassware,
London (1973), p. 64,

recording the suggestion of Mr. J. Scholles.

J.M. Bacon, ‘Acrostics in Glass — A Jacobite Puzzle’,

Country Life,
(1947), p. 523.

This and subsequent references come from Hughes, pp.

247-8.
B. Lenmaii,
The Jacobite Risings in Britain, 1689-1746,

London (1956), p. 131.

Scottish and Jacobite Glass,
Glasgow (1938), p. 176.

Francis p. 195.
Fleming, p. 184.

Francis, Pl. LXII B.
`Jacobite Drinking Glasses and their relation to the

Jacobite medals’,
BrNumJ,
2nd ser. VI, (1921-2), p.

270; Francis p. 191.

THE FLINT GLASS

HOUSES ON THE
RIVERS TYNE

AND WEAR DURING
THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY

by Catherine Ross

A
Paper read to the Circle on 15 March, 1983
•

This Paper falls into two sections. In the first, and

larger, section we shall look at the history of the north-

east flint glass houses, their owners, locations, and
changing fortunes. This will be followed in the second

section by a discussion of the problems of identifying
the glass produced in these north-east houses. Both of

these areas are, of course, comparatively familiar

territory to the glass enthusiast. The history of the

houses has long been available to us through the work
of Francis Buckley, and various antiquarians and

scholars in the north-east. There have also been
several determined efforts to pin down the identity of
Newcastle glass, most notably by W.A. Thorpe, whose

identification of the Newcastle Light Baluster in the
1930s has had an enormous influence on subsequent

literature. The work of all these earlier scholars has
been invaluable both in stimulating interest in north-

east flint glass, and in laying the foundations of a

comprehensive history of the subject. This

comprehensive history remains to be written but in the
meantime we can move a little further towards it by
adding some new research to the earlier work and
bringing some new perspectives to bear on the

material. This paper is an attempt to offer both some
newly discovered facts and some new perspectives.

Of all the earlier scholars, we owe perhaps the

greatest debt to Francis Buckley. Buckley provided a

sound starting point for later work with his two articles

on north-east glass in the eighteenth century,

published in the
Journal of the Society of Glass Technology

during the 1920s.’ On the whole, the general account
of north-east flint glass outlined by Buckley in these
two articles is an accurate and complete one. He

identified all the major glass houses and traced their

development with great skill keeping faithfully to the

documentary evidence that he had assembled. But
although his work needs no major revision, it can

certainly be updated by a host of minor points; minor
points that usually complement but occasionally

modify the history he outlined. In order to present

these new points in context I shall recount Buckley’s

established history in very general terms pointing out

on the way where new research differs from, or adds

to, his version; and indeed also pointing out the areas

which still remain dark and where further research is

still needed.
The history of north-east flint glass usually begins in

1684, when John and Onesiphorus Dagnia and others
leased a parcel of land from Nemiah Blagdon on which

to build a glass house. This land was on the south side

of a street called the Closegate, to the west of the city

walls (figure 1). By the late seventeenth century there
was already a quite separate colony of broad-glass, or
window-glass, houses to the east of the city at the

Ouseburn. These had been in operation since the early

seventeenth century and were associated with the
traditional broad-glass making families of Huguenot

descent, the Henzells and the Tyzacks. Since it is with

flint glass rather than broad glass that we are

concerned here, and since there was little connection
between the two branches of the glass industry, little

will be said about the Ouseburn glass houses; but it is
useful to remember that throughout the eighteenth

century they continued to be the centre of glass

manufacturing in Newcastle, far more important in

terms of size, production and investment than the

Closegate houses to the west of the city.
2

The Dagnia brothers (who are assumed to be from

a family of glass makers recorded in Bristol in 1660)
3

succeeded in building their new glass house in the

Closegate. The first minor point that needs to be made

here is that the Dagnia house was not the first to be
established in this area. In 1672 James Shafto, a
merchant and coal owner, had made his will in which

he left to his brother, Mark, “the Close at the Forth

called the Hospital Close and the glass houses without

the Closegate” .
4
Nothing further is known of these

earlier glass houses and this is certainly one area in

which further research is needed.
The other minor point that perhaps should be made

here concerns the role of the Dagnia family. Although
the Dagnias are usually associated exclusively with the

introduction of flint glass to the region, they have

equal, if not greater, significance as pioneers of black
bottle manufacturing. The first house that the brothers

built in 1684 was certainly a bottle house and was

clearly described as such in Chancery law suits over
the property.
3
Later generations of the Dagnias also

seem to have been primarily concerned with bottles.
During the 1720s and 1730s the family’s glass interests

comprised three bottle houses (two at South Shields
and one at Newcastle) as compared to only one flint
glass house. The head of the family at that time, John

Dagnia of South Shields, appears regularly in the

Newcastle Customs books exporting large quantities of

bottles to Holland and the Baltic ports. In view of the

Dagnias’ probable association with Bristol, where the

manufacture of black bottles developed quite

vigorously at quite an early date,
8

it seems quite

likely that the Dagnias brought to the north-east skills
and techniques relating to black bottle making as well

as skills that could be adapted to the new material of

flint glass.
Having established their bottle house in 1684, in

1691 the Dagnias leased another parcel of land on the

north side of the Closegate on which they built a

second glass house and entered into a partnership “to

carry on the joint trade of making and vending flint

glass wares”. 1691 then marks the clear beginning of

flint glass manufacture in the north-east.

Unfortunately it proved to be an abortive birth. In

1707, according to John Dagnia in 1712, the house
was shut up and the utensils and stock transferred to

Onesiphorus Dagnia’s newly erected bottle house at
South Shields. A legal wrangle between the two

brothers ensued, the exact outcome of which is not
known, but it appears that both Closegate houses were
restarted around 1720.
Both houses were certainly in operation by 1732,

when the Common Council of Newcastle attempted to
levy tolls on all the glass houses in and around the city.

To this end they minuted a list of working glass houses
which included one flint glass house and one bottle
house at the Closegate, both belonging to Mr.

Dagnia
7
(John Dagnia of South Shields, the son of

Onesiphorus, who managed both Newcastle houses in
addition to his two bottle houses at South Shields).

The Council’s attempt to levy tolls miscarried and in
1742 the 1732 order was repealed. Again the Council

minuted a list of working glass houses, and again the

list includes the two Dagnia houses at the Closegate.
7

The Council lists of 1732 and 1742 are interesting

not merely for confirming the existence of the

Dagnias’ single flint glass house, but also for
not

confirming the existence of a second flint glass house
in the Closegate belonging to Airey Cookson & Co..
Buckley, following the work of local historians,

suggested that this second flint glass house was

established in 1728.
8
Although the Airey Cookson

house was certainly the second to start work in the

city, 1728 is probably too early for it. The first

contemporary reference to the partnership so far

discovered is in July 1749, when the Newcastle

Customs Officers’ Search Books record that Airey

Cookson & Co. exported 2 cwt. 24 ozs. of white flint
glass to Hamburg.° There is a strong possibility that

the partnership was established in 1748 by John

Cookson and Thomas Airey following the death of

Thomas Airey’s father, Joseph. (Joseph Airey,
incidentally, already owned a bottle house at Bill Quay

in Gateshead in which John Cookson had a share.)
The years 1749 and 1750 were a time of changes for

Newcastle flint glass. Not only did Airey Cookson &
Co. probably start production, but the old Dagnia

Closegate house changed hands when it was taken over

by another Newcastle merchant, John Williams. The
entry of these three new men — John Cookson,
Thomas Airey, and John Williams — into the flint

glass trade almost certainly gave it a much needed
fillip. All three were established merchants who

brought with them capital, shipping facilities and

trade connections. Williams had come to Newcastle
from (interestingly) Stourbridge. He may well have

had previous connections with glass but the main
reason for his move to the north-east was another

furnace-based industry — iron; in 1729 he had entered
a partnership with John Cookson to work iron

foundries in Cumberland and Durham. Thomas Airey

was a general merchant with, as the Newcastle agent
for a lead mining company, a particular interest in

lead. John Cookson, like his colleagues, was a general

merchant and manufacturer but, unlike Airey and

Williams, his main business interest was already glass.

By the 1750s Cookson already owned the large and

profitable flat glass works at South Shields producing

crown glass for windows and plate glass for mirrors.

He owned a share in Joseph Airey’s bottle house at Bill

Quay, and was shortly to expand his glass empire by
taking over John Dagnia’s two bottle houses at South

Shields. All three men were already connected through

various business partnerships, and their common

interests were underlined during the 1760s when the
three Closegate glass houses were amalgamated into a

co-partnership calling itself “The Owners of the
Closegate Bottle and Flint Glass Houses”.’°
In 1770 north-east flint glass again embarked on a

period of change. One element of this change was the

apparent re-organisation of the Airey Cookson
partnership with new partners and, presumably, new

capital. The partners in 1770 were:
1

°a

Capital

John Cookson

15/30th

£3,750

Thomas Airey

9/30th

£2,250

Joseph Wilson

4/30th

£1,000

George Dickinson

2/30th

£200

Dickinson was a merchant who evidently dealt in flint

glass and who often appears in the Customs Books as

an exporter. Joseph Wilson was almost certainly the

manager of the house and may well have been related

to Samuel Wilson, who managed Cookson’s flat glass
house at Shields, and Jacob Wilson, who managed the

Bill Quay bottle house. The rearrangement of the

Airey Cookson partnership in 1770 was one part of a

sudden interest taken by the Cookson family in flint

glass. 1770 also saw the establishment of a new flint
glass works at Glasgow, the grandly named

“Verreville”, which was built to manufacture

“crystal glass according to the finest manner of the

Continent” and for which glass cutters and engravers

were brought from Germany.” The partners in this

interesting venture including four Tyneside men:

Isaac Cookson (John Cookson’s eldest son), Charles
Williams (John Williams’ son), Joseph Robinson, and
Evan Deer (Cookson’s managing partner at the

Shields bottle houses). John Cookson was almost
certainly involved in this venture and it may represent

an effort to start his son off in business.’
2

Verreville was probably established to supply the

growing market in America and the house is said to

have come to grief during the American Wars. Airey

Cookson & Co. proved more durable and the partner-

ship lasted until 1803, at which point both the

Cooksons and the Aireys withdrew, put the house up
for sale, to be bought by its previous manager,

William Wilson (Joseph Wilson’s son).
13
There seems

no doubt that the house flourished during the last thirty

years of the eighteenth century. In 1770 the firm’s total

exports for the year amounted to less than 70 cwt. of
glass. By 1790 this had increased to 247 cwt. The three

main destinations for exports were Hamburg,

Amsterdam and Rotterdam. John Williams’ house, by

contrast, was not so long lived and ceased production in

1782 after the whole building had been destroyed by

fire.’
4
The house does not appear to have been rebuilt

as a flint glass house, although it is possible that it was

absorbed into Cookson’s still thriving bottle works.

Despite the loss of John Williams’ house, the last

quarter of the eighteenth century was a period of
growth, albeit rather uncertain growth, for the flint

glass trade in the north-east. This period saw four

attempts to establish new flint glass houses in the area

but, unfortunately, only two of these four attempts

proved successful. The first of these new glass houses

was one of the unsuccessful ones: this was the “New

Glass House” erected by John Hopton on the river
Wear near SUnderland in 1769. Buckley quotes the

two notices that tell us the house was “now building”

during 1769, and that by September “all sorts of

double flint glass, white enamel, fine blue and green

glass” were being advertised for sale. The house did
not last long. It probably came to an end in 1775 when

Hopton approached Sir John Delaval, the owner of the

large Hartley bottle works, seeking to sell or exchange
a large quantity of ashes.’
5
The house was certainly

dormant by 1781, for in that year one of Delaval’s
agents reported to him that he had heard some men

were about to restart the house (he later found that the

rumour was unfounded).
16

Despite being so short-lived, Hopton’s house is one

of the most interesting of the northeast flint glass
houses, and certainly one where further research is

needed. Buckley suggested that Hopton had come to

Sunderland from the Whitefriars glass house in
London. If this is indeed so then it throws up many

very interesting questions. Why did Hopton move his
manufacturing operations to the provinces? There is
no doubt that it was cheaper to manufacture glass in

the north-east (coal was a fraction of the London price,

lead was as much as one third cheaper) but was
Hopton aiming to manufacture cheap glass for the

local market or quality glass for the London market,

sending it up to London by ship in the same way that

flat glass and bottles were sent up to London? Did he

indeed have an eye on the export market? (Hopton

certainly appears in the Sunderland Customs Books in
1770 exporting 45 casks and 3 boxes of flint glass to

Amsterdam.)’? Why did Hopton go out of business in
such a short time? He is ripe for further research.
The second attempt to found a new flint glass house

in the north-east was also one of the unsuccessful ones.

The promoters of this attempt were Joshua Henzell,

John Grey and Richard Shortridge, who petitioned
Newcastle’s Common Council in September, 1785,

asking for a lease of some land on the South Shore,
where they were “desirious of establishing a

manufacture of flint glass and other types of glass

ware” .
18
The house was erected and was soon

advertising “all kinds of flint glass and phials”. By
this time the three original partners had been joined by

James King. King and Joshua Henzell were already

partners in the large window-glass company at the

Ouseburn. This company, the Newcastle Company of
Broad and Crown Glass Owners, had grown out of the

old Tyzack and Henzell glass houses, and although
some Henzells and Tyzacks continued to hold shares
in it, by this time it was largely controlled by the
powerful coal owner, Sir Matthew White Ridley.
The new South Shore flint glass house was

ostensibly quite separate from the large window-glass
company; the personal property of King, Henzell and

their partners. However, in 1785 it emerged that King

and Henzell had partly financed their new venture

with money borrowed from a Newcastle bank on the
credit account of the larger glass company. The larger

company refused to honour the debt, the bank sued
the company, and in the subsequent upheaval both

King and Henzell were declared bankrupts. The

shares in the flint glass company were sold and the
property passed to three London merchants, creditors

of Joshua Henzell, who eventually sold it to a

neighbouring iron foundry.’°
The third of the new flint glass houses was a success-

ful one. This was the Northumberland Glass House,
probably established in 1787.
20

The house was owned

by the Northumberland Glass Company, who also
owned a large crown glass works at Lemington, a

small village to the west of Newcastle. In the same way
that Airey Cookson & Co. was subsidiary to

Cookson’s other glass interests, so the
Northumberland Glass House was the younger

brother of a much larger flat glass works. The

arrangement certainly benefitted the single flint glass
house and indeed one of the reasons why the flint glass

house was a successful one may be that the partners in

the Northumberland Glass Company were all men of

substance: bankers, coal owners and well established

merchants. Following tradition, the Northumberland

Glass Company erected their flint glass house not at
Lemington but in the Closegate. Unlike Airey

Cookson’s house it was actually within the city walls,
and emissions of smoke from the house inevitably
created a public nuisance. The company was indicted

in the assizes on this account in 1797 but was reprieved
on the partners’ promise to raise the cone of the house

and make other alterations “in order to render the

house as little offensive as possible” .
2

‘ In 1821,

following a destructive fire on the site, the company
moved to a glass house at the Skinnerburn, well

outside the city walls.
The fourth of our new houses also survived into the

nineteenth century. This was the flint glass house

established at South Shields by John Grey and
Richard Shortridge in 1791.
22
Shortridge and Grey

had, of course, been involved in the abortive South

Shore flint glass house and it seems probable that the

new house was stocked with materials and utensils

salvaged from their previous venture. Grey died in
1796 and the house was carried on by Richard

Shortridge, and later by his son in partnership with

others. In 1806 Shortridge extended his glass interests
by buying a second glass house in Shields which was

used to manufacture crown glass. Both houses

survived until the 1840s.
This then is a broad factual account of the flint glass

houses of the north-east during the eighteenth century.

Until the middle of the century only one flint glass

house was in operation. In 1749 this single house was

joined by a second. The period 1770-1790 saw two

unsuccessful attempts and two successful attempts to
establish new flint glass houses. By the end of the

century three flint glass houses were at work on the

Tyne: Airey Cookson & Co., and the Northumberland

Glass Company in Newcastle, and R.T. Shortridge &

Co. at South Shields.
This is certainly a story of growth, but not of

spectacular growth — particularly not when con-
trasted with the vigorous growth so apparent in the

window-glass and bottle-glass industries in the region.
By 1800 there were thirteen large window-glass houses

and thirteen bottle-houses at work on the rivers Tyne

and Wear and the Northumberland coast (figure 2).

All were successful and all were generating substantial
profits for their owners. When in 1801 the Rev. Baillie

wrote of Newcastle that glass “next to coal is the chief

force of wealth in this opulent town” it was to these

more mundane and utilitarian branches of the glass

industry that he was referring.
23

It is important to remember that throughout the

eighteenth century Newcastle’s considerable contem-

porary reputation as a nationally important centre of
glass manufacture rested on its production of flat glass

and bottles rather than flint glass table ware. When
“Newcastle glass” is spoken of in the eighteenth

century it nearly always means window glass, and in

particular broad glass. For instance, the often quoted

passage from Richard Neve’s
The City and Country

Purchaser
24
describing Newcastle glass being sent to

London in coal ships clearly refers to broad glass of the

type manufactured by the Henzells and Tyzacks and

not (as it is sometimes quoted to suggest) flint glass.
Flint glass was, in fact, the only branch of the local

glass industry that could not boast of a national
importance. By the end of the eighteenth century most

of the window glass, and a high proportion of the

bottles, sold or used in London came from the north-

east. The stimulating effect of demand from the large

London market is the main reason why both these

branches of the north-east glass industry flourished so

dramatically. By contrast the flint glass houses appear

to have been manufacturing primarily for a local

market and a limited demand; thus they failed to

experience a comparably dramatic growth. It is

important to remember this in order to put north-east
flint glass into its correct local perspective. Flint glass

was
made in the north-east during the eighteenth

century but it was the smallest branch of the industry
and was quite overshadowed in terms of size and

prestige by its two larger brothers.

FIGURE 2
NUMBERS
–
OF GLASS HOUSES AT WORK IN

THE NORTH-EAST, 1700-1800

Total in

England

Date Broad Bottle Crown Plate Flint Total where known

1700
10

–
–
1
11

1732
14

1
–
1
16

1745
15

2
–

1
18

1775
4
11
2
1
2
20

c.66

1800
4
13

8
1
3

20
82

To turn now
to the second, and in every way more

difficult, section of this paper: what kind of flint glass

were the north-east houses producing during the
eighteenth century? Let us start with the documentary

evidence. This is disappointingly thin. Although local
record offices contain bundles of documents from the

flat glass and bottle works, there are no such bundles

from the region’s flint glass houses. Most disappoint-

ing is the lack of any pattern books.
25

We do, of

course, have isolated references. In 1747, for instance,

John Cookson’s Day Book records that he exported a

cargo of flint glass to Hamburg which included plain

ale and wine glasses
@
8d per lb., “worm’d” ale and

wine glasses @ 10d per lb., quarter pint mugs and pint
mugs, three pint decanters @ 9d per lb., candlesticks

@ 3s, and a pyramid consisting of 4 salvers, a top

branch, sweet meat and jelly glasses; this pyramid was

priced at 2 guineas and 4 pence.
26
A bill from the

Owners of the Closegate Bottle and Flint Glass Houses

to Thomas Delaval in 1772 itemises a variety of

glasses: ground quart decanters, gill beakers, ground

water cups, ribbed wine glasses, electrical cylinders

and globes, and enamelled wine and water glasses.
27

The Closegate houses also supplied the Delavals with

lustres for chandeliers. Chandeliers were also manu-

factured by the Northumberland Glass House, who

supplied two to the Assembly Rooms “which cost, as

it is said, some hundred pounds each”.
28
Customs

Books occasionally specify the type of flint glass that

was exported and these entries include drinking

glasses, wine glasses and, frequently, flint glass bottles

filled with mustard.
29

The most substantial piece of documentary evidence

we have is a price list from the Northumberland Glass

House.
39

Although the list is undated it seems fair to

date it at around 1810, and to take it as representing
the house’s output during .the earlier part of its life

(figure 3). The house produced glass in five varieties
of metal, the basic prices of which were:

All plain flint glass

1 s 4d per lb.

Strong flint glass for cutting 1s. 6d per lb.

Common green glass

is Od per lb.

Best green glass

1 s 6d per lb.

Best blue glass

1s 4d per lb.

Articles were variously priced at these prices or more,
according to the degree of skill their production

demanded. For instance, deep blue or green decanters
with three rings cost is 8d per lb., pitchers with

coloured edges cost 1 s 9d per lb., candlesticks with

square feet cost 2s Od per lb. Most expensive of all
were those articles that demanded faultless glass:

prisms cost 2s 6d per lb. and thermometer tubes 4s Od

per lb. In addition the price list contains a large

proportion of “tale” goods, which were lower-quality
goods priced by the dozen or the gross. Tale wine

glasses cost 4s Od per dozen, common flint inkwells,

24s Od per gross. The list also includes a number of

small phials named after the medicine they contained:

Turlingtons (cello shaped bottles containing
“Turlingtons Balsam of Life”) sold at 24s per gross,

and Daffys (for the famous Daffy’s Elixir) at 30s to 40s

depending on their capacity.
These isolated references and the price list are

valuable but they do not tell us all that much. They

certainly provide no help at all with the problem of

identifying actual pieces of glass. What shape were the

decanters supplied to Thomas Delaval in 1768? What

was the difference between the Northumberland
House’s common green glass and best green glass? So,

if the documentary evidence gives us only limited

help, can we learn anything more from actual pieces

of glass?
At first sight it appears that we can, for it has been

suggested that Newcastle glass is uniquely identifiable.
In 1936 W.A. Thorpe published an important article

in the
Connoisseur

31
in which he suggested that there

was a “nucleus of idioms” which distinguished glass

made at the Newcastle glass houses from glass made

elsewhere. Thorpe picked out six of these idioms: a tall

stem, a “tin hat” foot, a cylinder bowl, a broken air

twist, a stem inset into the foot, a dripping air tear.

Thorpe’s article was without any doubt an exciting

one, and the general point that he made — that we

should make more effort to distribute glasses over the

map of glassmakers’ Britain and not just to

concentrate on dating alone — was, and still is, a
valuable one. His claim to have discovered a failsafe
means of identifying Newcastle glass through the six

idioms is, however, a much more controversial legacy.

Why? Well briefly, as others have often pointed out,

the assumptions he made about the material on which

he based his conclusions are questionable. Thorpe
found and confirmed his six idioms by looking at three

groups of glasses: the Beilby glasses, glasses with

Jacobite engravings, and glasses with a local
provenance. In all three groups he thought a
Newcastle origin was “proved or probable”. No-one

would argue nowadays with his choice of the Beilbys
as a group of glasses with an almost certain Newcastle
origin. But many would perhaps argue with the

Jacobites: there is no evidence of any Jacobite support
in Newcastle during the eighteenth century; if any-

thing, local sentiment was firmly anti-Jacobite. Some

would also argue with the inclusion of glass from local
collections. There is ample evidence to show that the

flint glass in circulation in the north-east during the

eighteenth century was as likely to come from London

glass houses as from the local ones. The aristocracy

and lesser gentry certainly had their fine table ware

sent down to Newcastle from London. Furthermore,

London flint glass was easily available in the north-

east through glass and china dealers. Buckley quotes

two good examples of this: in Newcastle, Robert
Barker advertised “an elegant assortment of cut and

plain flint glass in the newest fashion and the best
London polish”; in Sunderland “Miss Hodgson from

London has laid in at her warehouse in Sunderland a

large and elegant assortment of plain and cut drinking
glasses, decanters etc. which she intends selling at the

very lowest London prices”. Therefore, if in two out

of three of Thorpe’s groups a Newcastle origin is not
in fact proved or probable then we must surely treat
the nucleus of idioms he identified with caution.
Newcastle glasses almost certainly do display the

idioms he picked out but there is nothing to suggest

that they were not also found on glasses from other

areas.
It was Thorpe’s article, of course, that first

suggested a Newcastle origin for that distinctive class

of tall stemmed wine glasses of outstanding beauty and

exquisite workmanship, which have since become
known as Newcastle Light Balusters. Are, then, the

light balusters from Newcastle? Here we move further

into the realm of speculation for it must be said that
there is no conclusive proof one way or the other.

Until conclusive proof does emerge to settle the matter

any answer cannot be anything more than a subjective
opinion and whereas Thorpe was of the opinion that

the glasses were made in Newcastle I feel that they

were not. This, I must repeat, is only a feeling and not

a proven conclusion; however, the feeling is based on
two specific considerations.

Firstly, to put it simply, I feel that the light balusters

are too good for Newcastle. The glasses are
undeniably of exceptional quality with beautifully
elegant proportions and thin lustrous metal. This is

very hard to reconcile with the general picture I get of
Newcastle glass as a whole which is of an industry

where quality was never all that important. All
branches of the glass industry in Newcastle, including
flint glass, owed their existence to the fact that they

could manufacture and sell glass cheaper than their

rivals. The whole glass trade of Newcastle was based

on providing a cheap rather than a luxury product. If

Newcastle glass had been of the outstanding quality of

the light balusters then other developments would

surely have followed. Such exquisite glass would surely
have found a market in London and yet there is no

evidence at all that Newcastle flint glass was regularly

shipped up to London. As we have seen, the trade was

in the opposite direction, with fashionable glass “with
the best London polish” coming down to Newcastle

from London, suggesting indeed that the home-
produced glass was, in terms of quality, distinctly

inferior. It is important not to underestimate the

superiority of London flint glass to provincial flint

glass throughout the eighteenth century. The quality

of London glass is underlined by the presence in the

City of glass decorators — cutters and engravers –
throughout the century. By the 1780s London housed

“cut-glass manufactories”, whole establishments

devoted to the decoration of glass.
32

By contrast

independent cutters and engravers do not appear in
Newcastle until the last quarter of the century, and this

surely would not have been the case — they would
have appeared earlier — had Newcastle glass houses

been producing quality glass for a luxury market. Of

course a form of decoration was practised in Newcastle

— enamelling on glass. But if we leave aside the

Beilbys as a special case, I think it arguable that a lot

of provincial white enamelling was a poor, and

distinctly provincial, imitation of engraved glass.

My second reason for feeling that the light balusters

have nothing to do with Newcastle is the theory that
these beautiful glasses were exported to Holland for

engraving (fig. 5) and then re-imported into England.
Again, this does not ring true with the general picture

of the glass trade of Newcastle. Generally speaking,
Newcastle merchants sold their glass in the market that

was most convenient to them. Such glass as was

exported was usually the poorer quality glass for which

a sale could not be secured at home. For instance, in
1763 John Cookson wrote to an Edinburgh merchant,

Alexander Baxter, suggesting that he ship some of his

flint glass to St. Petersburg:
33

I have a pretty quantity of flint glass which is of

sundry sorts and not so saleable here. To get rid of

(it) I would go as low or lower than the German,
the quality of which you know is indifferent.

Would it be amiss if a trial was made in St.

Petersburg? If you approve of it I shall consign to

your house £30 or £40 worth for a trial.

There is no doubt that flint glass
was
exported to the

Netherlands from Newcastle during the eighteenth

century, but this is not surprising in view of the

considerable trade between the north-east and the

continent in all commodities — bottles, lead, litharge,
iron and minerals in return for timber and black beer.

It seems more probable that the flint glass that did

cross the North Sea was, like Cookson’s consignment,
poor quality glass that was “not so saleable here”,

rather than glass of any outstanding qualities.
If Newcastle light baluster were not made in

Newcastle, where, then, do I think they did come

from? Here I stray off my subject into areas where

others are better qualified than I to speculate, but it

seems to me that there are two options. The light
balusters were either made in London, which is a far
more likely source for glass of this quality; or, despite

their lead metal, they were made on the continent –

the glasses are after all so conspicuously un-English in

their design and execution. But this is no more than

speculation.
To return to our main theme. If we put to one side

Thorpe’s six idioms and Newcastle Light Balusters, do

we have any glasses that we can say with some degree

of certainty are from Newcastle? Of course, there are
the glasses decorated by the Beilbys (fig. 4), and,

although it is possible that some of their work was
executed on glasses from elsewhere, it is surely safe to

assume that the greater part was executed on
Newcastle glasses. And indeed the Beilby glasses do on

the whole seem to have a coherence that suggests a

common origin. Certain shapes recur: small ogee-

shaped or round bowls, plain bucket bowls, mallet

shaped decanters. The glass is usually quite thick; the
proportions are not always pleasing; and, ignoring the

delicacy of the enamelling and concentrating on the
glass beneath, the glass itself is often undistinguished.

In terms of quality the glasses on which the Beilbys

worked are very different indeed from the exquisite

delicacy of the light balusters. How then do we explain

the few Beilby enamelled light balusters? These do

pose a problem but all I can say is to repeat that I find

the light balusters quite different from the main corpus

of the Beilby glasses and, for me, the evidence of these
few glasses does not overcome my reservations about

the Newcastle origins of the light balusters as a whole
group. It is often said that we should discount the

decoration on a piece of glass and look to the glass itself

if we want to place it correctly. We do, after all,

discount the engraved Dutch inscriptions on so many

light balusters. My only explanation for the Beilby

light balusters is that these glasses may also be cases

where the decoration was added elsewhere to an

already manufactured glass.

To return, finally, to our original question: what

kinds of flint glass were the north-east houses
producing? On the evidence of the isolated pieces of

documentary evidence, plus the evidence of the
Beilbys, we can certainly provide a rough and general

answer. The north-east houses were making the whole
range of eighteenth century glass with which we are

now familiar: drinking glasses of all shapes and sizes,

salvers, jelly glasses, decanters, candlesticks, etc.; they

seem to have been adept with enamel, producing both
enamel twist stems and enamelled decoration; they

also produced more utilitarian types. of flint glass –
phials, electrical apparatus, small mustard bottles and

lighting equipment. It seems fair to sum all this up by

saying that the north-east houses were typical
provincial glass houses producing a wide variety of
glass for the local market, which included some

demand from local merchants for export.
This paper began by acknowledging the debt we

owe to Francis Buckley. It is appropriate to end by
reminding you of what he wrote in 1926:

It is probable, therefore, that Newcastle flint

glass, although of good quality, was for the first

60 years of the eighteenth century designed

mainly to serve the local market and for places

in Ireland and abroad. Much of the table glass

of high quality which was used by the gentry of
Northumberland must have come from London

along with expensive kinds of china and earthen-
ware. Towards the end of the eighteenth century
and in the earlier part of the nineteenth century

the production of fine table glass about

Newcastle increased enormously. But until

1775, at any rate, this was not by any means the
main product of the Tyne glass houses.

This was Buckley’s conclusion from the evidence
available to him in 1926, and I think it stands up well

to the evidence available to us today. If Newcastle did
have a “golden age” of flint glass, it was surely not

during the eighteenth century but during the first
quarter of the nineteenth century, when eight houses
were at work on the Tyne and Wear producing cut and

plain glass that
was

of sufficient quality to be shipped

to London. For the greater part of the eighteenth
century flint glass in the north-east appears to have
been a provincial industry, and provincial in its more

unflattering sense of producing goods that were in

some degree inferior to those produced in London.

NOTES

Abbreviations:
TWAD Tyne and Wear Archives Department
NCRO Northumberland County Record Office
PRO

Public Record Office

1.
F. Buckley, “Glasshouses on the Wear in the

Eighteenth Century”,
Trans. Society of Glass Technology,

vol.9, 1925, pp.105-111: “Glasshouses on the Tyne in

the Eighteenth Century”,
Trans. Society of Glass

Technology, vol.10,
1926, pp.26-51. All unattributed

citations that follow are found in these two articles.

2.
For the full history of these houses and other flat glass

and bottle houses mentioned in this article, see C.M.
Ross “The development of the glass industry on the
rivers Tyne and Wear, 1700-1900”, unpublished

Ph.D. thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne

(1982).

3.
See H.M. Wood, “The Dagnia Family”,
Archaeologia

Aeliana,
3rd series, vol.XVII (1930), pp.224-234.

4.
Archaeologia Aeliana,
new series (1906), pp.255-256.

5.
PRO C5/235/3 (Bridges) Dagnia v Dagnia, 1712: PRO

C12/1207/11, Wall v Dagnia, 1717. The details in the

following paragraph come from these suits.
6.

Sir Kenelm Digby, who is largely credited with the

invention of the black bottle in the seventeenth century,

is said to have established his bottle works at Newnham

on Severn. By the end of the seventeenth century,

according to Houghton’s tables, there were five bottle

houses at Bristol, three at Gloucester and two at

Newnham.

7.
TWAD Common Council Minute Books 15 June,

1732.

7a. Ibid. 27 September, 1742.

8.
This claim originates from the Surtees Society edition of

the memoir of Ambrose Barnes (Surtees Society (1866),
vol.2), which suggests that the glasshouse was

established in the old Dissenters’ Meeting House,
which was put up for sale in 1728.

9.
PRO E190/249/2. John Cookson was certainly

exporting flint glass on his own previous to this date, see
note 26.

10.
This is a rather nebulous partnership; it may have been

an informal arrangement between the houses intended
only for trading purposes. It was probably dissolved in
1785 following the death of John Cookson and the

destruction of the Williams’ flint glass house.

10a. University of Durham, Department of Palaeography,

Cookson Mss. Box 1/15.

11.
A. Brown,
A History of Glasgow,
Glasgow (1793) vol.2,

p. 267, and J.A. Fleming,
Scottish and Jacobite Glass,

Glasgow (1938), pp. 130-132.

12.
It also probably represents an attempt to supply the

American market. Interestingly John Cookson also

owned a bottle house on the west coast. This was first

sited at Ellenfoot (Maryport) and later moved to

Glasgow.

13.
See notices of sale of shares,

Newcastle Courant
30 April,

1803; 21 May, 1803; 1 September, 1806. A plan of the
glass house in 1802 is in the Bell Collection at Newcastle

Central Library (ref. 7/3). William Wilson & Co. ran
the house until 1811, when they moved to a newly built
flint glass house at the Skinnerburn.

14.
See various quotes in Buckley (1926) for notices of this

and several previous fires.

15.
NCRO 2DE 4/8, George Douglas to Sir John Delaval,

19 May, 1775.

16.
NCRO 2DE 11/3, William Allen to Sir John Delaval,

1781.

17.
PRO E190/269/3.

18.
TWAD Common Council Minute Books, 20

September, 1785.

19.
This glass house should not be confused with the Tyne

Glass House established on the South Shore by Banner

and Barber in 1796. Arthur Churchill in
Glass Notes

(1935) mistakenly attributes a decanter to this house.
The Tyne Glass House (later the Tyne Glass Works)

was a crown glass house not a flint glass house.

20.
E. Mackenzie,
A description and historical account of

Northumberland,
Newcastle (1811), vol.2, p. 362 states

that the Northumberland Glass Company began its

operations in 1787, and the flint glass house appears in

the 1787 Newcastle Directory. However, the main deed

of partnership establishing the company is dated 1791

(see TWAD 80/259 Al).

21.
TWAD Common Council Minute Books, 16 June,

1797.
22.

The land was leased from the Dean and Chapter of

Durham.

23.
J. Baillie, An
Impartial History of the Town and County of

Newcastle upon Tyne,
Newcastle (1801), p.72.

24.
Richard Neve,
The City and County Purchaser
etc. (2nd.

edition, 1726), pp.146-148.

25.
The nearest we have to a Newcastle pattern book is the

“Ip Olufsen Weyse”, a pattern book from an

eighteenth century Norwegian crystal glass house which
includes a few patterns brought by two Newcastle glass
makers; the glasses have short, heavy baluster stems.

See Ada Polak, “The `Ip Olufsen Weyse’ Illustrated

Price List ..
“Journal of Glass Studies,
vol.XI (1969),

pp. 86-105.

26.
TWAD John Cookson’s Day Book 1745-48, 2

September 1746. The flint glass was probably Dagnia

flint glass, a previous entry for flint glass (12 July 1746
“wine and ale glasses” were sent to Alex. Wallace at

Bergen) is cross-referenced to “Dagnia and Co.”. The

entries in the Day Book mainly consist of shipments of

crown, plate and broad glass, saltpetre and kelp.

27.
NCRO 2DE 11/9.

28.
Baillie,

op. cit.,
p.217.

29.
Durham was a famous mustard producing area during

the eighteenth century.

30.
Durham County Record Office NCB/1/JB/1862.

31.
W.A. Thorpe, “The Dagnia Tradition in Newcastle

Glass”,
Connoisseur (1933),
pp.13-25.

32.
See the evidence given by several London glass and cut

glass manufacturers to the Committee on the

adjustment of commercial intercourse between Great

Britain and Ireland,
Irish Commons Journals,
12 August,

1785, particularly that of Samuel Parker, who states
that cut glass is only established in London and its

neighbourhood.

33.
TWAD John Cookson’s Letter Book, John Cookson to

Alexander Baxter, 16 February, 1763.

doz.

5 *
4 0

6
7
7

F
t

5
7

4
6

3 6

6 o

5
6 o

8 o

08
08
az

4
6

•
6

6 o

11 0
9

•
o

3 •

7 •

4 •

PRICES OF FLINT GLASS,

AT THE NORTHUMBERLAND GLASS CO’S WAREHOUSE,

NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE.
0441441101016003rogam.

per lb.
I.

Co
LI. plain Flint Glatt

—

Ditto, ftrong, for nutting

z 6

Commie Green — —

Bell di. —

t 6

&
Me

–

—

•

Aottgoglan

—

Linings for ditto

—

Arms, all films, plain and moulded

z 6

Ditto, seamen!

I 8

Apparatus with cocks, 36a. each.

B
OWLS, all kinds

—

z 6

Ditto with cozen

—

Boner loam and comm

—

1 6

LA Sate, not cut —

•
cut

—

Ditto Troupe

—

Ditto fountains

–

rean

Hop

beers, or Wine and Waters, plai•

x 6

Ditto mamell. or
Net fcroz.

Britifh Oil Squum, per

z I

Ditto, green,

Wow,

:6 0

Bateman ‘s, green,
Am,

az o

Pursued) punt, pew

—

Dino

dims, white

I 3

110fom Bottles

— —

Beakers, tale, pints

—

Ditto ditto, piots

–

Ditto /mill,
–.

—

Sato,
blue and Blot, for Supr —

1Wto ditto, and coven

—

0 6

Braodiza, tale, welted foot.]
0
4 tn.

Bab for Coach Lamps —

1 8

C
RUETS. tale, pos. and flapper.

Diva ditto, for Say

Ditto, tale, bail top

—

–

•
ditto, on a bell foot

—

Ditto
Soy,

and hopper. to mu

Chamber Candleflich.

—

Conledicarni Jars and Cozen

•

Cans with handle, different

Ditto, threaded

z zo

Ditto. ale, 4 pints

—

Ditto. Lemonades, bell,

–

Dino. ditto, talc

—

–

Coven, all lads

Coppiog 0/affoo

—

Calms md Cruet., talc

Cylioders for Lamp., common fme
Chamber Lamps with flalk

–

Ditto dim with foot

—

DIto

ditto, with Balk and a pipit

Ditto ditto, ditto

3 PM.

Ditto

ditto, with foot mid a popes

Ditto

ditto,

ditto

3 1
0
9
0
.

Cream Pot, blue, flint, and green

Chemical Glans, all kind.

a 0

Cupp. for eoap

—

CuBud Cupp

—

–

Ditto with huller

—

–

Cyder Glair, /wird

—

–

Di
tto
green,

pi
$.94,

Ditto
dint,

Am,

Capillaire. & Ion
Ltes.

41 o

Cop, pip, purrd
and

upright

Ditto {pin
t
and larger

—

Ditto troth Medic.

—

Candleflicks,
T
are

foot

—

Ditto for Ws Tapers

—

Ditto, Chamber, with • handle —

Chamber Lamps, with pan and foot

n
.7

7
9
g
recv.p.gret
wt. 3o 0

Jlz• Ditto dim, 6 & I es.

Iffmna
t Lerk with s

an
3 ring.

1 6

Dino, blse sad green, with.. 3 ring. I

MY= Drum

Dna. common

—

Decants’, with whoa nor — l
g

E
TA dale, posed

Ditto, ungronnd
Ws, grew, ad tot

ET
Phial, I to 4 dm

14 0

Ditto Peppenaiot,
Late,

06 0

Ent de loot, !Ea nod Roppent

Ditto, large

rILITTU. tale, .4444,w plia foal
Ditto, oft toot

Ditto, be*

Dims, awasi’d

—

—
pet lb.

Plower Poets, 6 inches and under
Ditto, larger

—

Din

6
r

loop and rocket.

Di
Trap,green, no handle

—

tto,

Riot,

ditto

—

G
O

E
t
o
pT
S , p
i
!
,
n
1
t
0
4,
,
1
.
1
1

1
.
0

…:

Ditto

ditto, ditto

–

Ditto

ditto, ditto

–

Ditto

past, ditto

—

Ditto

pinto, ditto

Ditto

ditto,
ditto,

‘—

Ditto

ditto, ditto,

Ditto

ditto, ditto,

t 6

Ditto

quart, ditto,

Ditto

pinti,

into
,

Goblet.
with f . foot, not cot

1 _

pint

Ditto

itto 1 ditto

Ditto

itto

ditto

Ditto 1 pt. 9. q . and pt.

—

z 6

Godfrey, pee
,frirryi.

az o

Greenough’, f ..r.., Por 1 v

white,p.3.4.

Ditto ditto, (mall,

An.,

Top Clair, fq are button

–

Ditto, fcallop’d

—

–

Ditto, 1 row of Mgt

—

–

Dino, a row. o Mop —

—

Gobkm, with f Pre foot, not cut

0 6

H
UNCARIES, sr.p

i
z;:
1 00 0

Ditto,

3 00. 20 0

Ditto,

4 00. 01
o

Hour Phial., ditto

Half Hour ditto

It o

INKS, common, (guars

rimp. i

Ditto, ditto,
C

Biro

04
o

Ditto Thumb, green

15 o

Ditto ditto, flint

—

Ditto lat, green

—

36 o

Ditto ditto, flint

—

Ditto for
00d

cCumpe

—

t
sod S

—

Dino.

—

Ciller., hite,
pie re:

Ditto ditto, green

—

16 o

jellies, tale

—

DD o,
bell

—

Ditto, bob. button

—

Jam and Beakers for

wing

a
5

an
for Pickles, or I ye.over Roods 1 3

L
AMPS, barrel

1 6

Ditto. Vafe,with necks or knob. 6

Ditto enamerd with pm

–

Ditto, ditto, with pan and foot

Liniogs for Salt. and Mullards

Lavender., round and fquarc, a oz 1, ,

Di.

ditto

4
oz. J

•
OSTARD Pots, tale,

.en Ditto with VW,

Ditto with hullos. tops

—

•
tale

Ditto with welted foot

—

Muffincers, round foot

—.-

13410, kplare foot, uncut

–

Ditto linings

—

Mint Vials, white, tizertfi,

36 0

Ditto,

wren,
Wm,

24 o

lelufiwoom BOW, whist

— I 3

Dino

ditto, grim

—

Minute Glaffes

—

Half ‘

ditto

—

Muffs for Coach Lamps

—

a o

None. Viols
—

—
1 3

3 6

PODELDOCS

—

kJ
Ovals for Seto

04 Now
a, and floppen to cut

3 0

DOCKET Bottles, pen, pots

d
0

1 Ditto, white,

Ditto. peen, pint

$
0

Ditto. white,ditto

•
•

Polo end Nolfela

—

7 0 Patti Pun

—

–

1 • t
Prod Vi W,

finking

—
dol.

5
d

tO 0 I
so o

9
6

8 o

9 o

7
4
0

4
0

6 o

II 0

10 0

6
3

•

i
I

9
o
I

3
6

•
6

06 0

I
.

6
rg

Prifou

–

a 6

Pitchm, with co
–

loured ode.

D
OUNDS & &op. ground 4 on

IX
Ditto

ditto, ditto

Ditto

ditto, ditto

a on

Ditto

ditto, ditto

3
os.

Ditto

ditto, ditto

on.

Ditto

ditto, ditto 6 oz.

Ditto

ditto, ditto
tea

Retort. and Receivers, green

Ditto

di., Blot

—

S
A INFOS, forted Sam

— f o

Mack. for
Groper,

peen

0 3

Ditto for Lamp

—

I 6

tilts. tale

—

Ditto with 3 feet

—

Swea

i
–

ttocat Saucer, canoton

—

Ditto plain
for

cuttng

—

Ditto, ftrip
.
c1 with enamel

—

Ditto, with
60.41.

—

Ditto, mirk 0 lisp and handle —

Ditto, with rip and one.

–

Ditto, with rings, pilaw, sod beadle,

Ditto enaznerd and ft alloxid

Di00, mooted foot. and plain cup

Stoughtoo’s peen, pr.
exVi,

2 x o

Syllabubs, tale

— —

Ditto, ben

—

Ditto, with I handle

–

Ditto, with a ditto

—

Smalling Bottles and Salt Bottles, tale

•
inoch’d — —

Satipartils

—

Stopper. for Cruet.

—

Sq ….. , com. pm
oz.
ze96

.44:44

zrzn.

4
0 13

11 01. 17 0

15 0

MuRard
1/

33 0 00 0

lb. 34 a
3
0
o

lb. 36 o 40

s lb.

1 3 16.1 a lb.

T
1.7963

logo,

604 — a 6

LettorBarosbeters

13i110, 1 ber16017143314

•
n
•—•

¨ 0

Tumblers, tale. Bust. h

Ditto, 4 nod $
10 a

pint

Ditto, to
.
a pot

—

Ditto.

— —

Ditto, 3 to a gout

–

Ditto, pint

—

Torliopook, large.p. per, 24 0
Ditto, fmall,

440.,

10 0

Tumble-ups, 9 pinta.

Top

—

T..
Pans — —

Dieu, g11 0

;

V
IA
“fro` Tot
7
3
” 4″”

3 on. so , a

4
00
.
03

a•

6 or.
3
0

Boa 36

10 P. wa

SI OS.

.411

16 an 6o

po
i
foor
g
tzt

n
a

from

Widc.mouth’d Phi01.9
mom, each flak f
4 5.44

1
4

▪
IN0.0, tale

V y Ditto, welted foot

v
ino, bell, common Sae

–

Pita, middle 60. —

litto, tint

—

Wine and Watirctale

—

Ditto bell

—

— 1 6

Winn, befl flamed foot

Ditto, cownel’il 0010

Ditto, ditto, pints

Wino and Waters, ettame__
1

.
4

Watch Palls

•

Ditto, a indict and ud< a 9 6 xo ¨ 7 ¨ 5 9 9 0 6 6 7 11 N. E. ALL KINDS OF CUT, ENGRAVED AND CROWN GLASS, UPON THE LOWEST TERMS, EITHER FOR HOME CONSUMPTION OR EXPOR ' T'ATION. Pristed C D. Alnedeal stulSow, Sandbill, Neavoldr. Figure 3. Price-list of the Northumberland Glass House, probably circa 1810. 84 a Figure 4. Four enamel-twist glasses enamelled in white with sporting scenes in the Beilby workshop, Newcastle; about 1765-70. H. of tallest glass 5 %in. (14.5cm.). Formerly Sir Hugh Dawson Collection. Photo: A.C. Cooper. a Figure 5. Three "Newcastle light baluster" wine-glasses, two with Dutch engraving. Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne. 85 THE GLASS CARAFE: 18th-19th CENTURY by John Frost A Paper read to the Circle by Mrs. Jenifer Frost on 20 March, 1984 By definition a carafe is simply a water bottle; the word comes from the Arabic and has been in use in England since at least the beginning of the 18th century. The spelling varies from time to time and a number of corruptions have occurred, the most common being "carroft", "croft" and "craft", all of which occur in glass advertisements of the 18th and 19th centuries. Even as late as 1880 three different spellings are used in a single glass-maker's catalogue. In several European languages a version of the word `carafe' is used to describe the vessel we called a decanter, but in English a distinction has persisted between the decanter, which normally has a stopper, and the often smaller vessel without a stopper. In English glass the carafe has usually been a small bottle with a short rather wide neck and a globular body. This of course is a very early and fundamental glass shape (fig. 1). During the more elegant or elaborate periods of tableglass the carafe sometimes followed both the shape and the decoration of the decanter, but at the same time the small globular bottle persisted in a plain or decorated form. A large element of speculation enters into all attempts to identify and date early glass, and carafes are no exception. The difficulty is the absence of illus- trations. Early advertisements were not illustrated and there is no way of being certain what the glass-seller's description really meant. What, for example, were the ribbed bottles advertised by Ravenscroft in 1677 in quart, pint, half-pint, and quarter-pint sizes; and, in a very similar range of sizes, the "bottles allover nipt diamond waies"? There is a flattened globular bottle in the British Museum with a longish neck and a ring near the top which is thought to be one of these, but was it a wine bottle or a water bottle? Probably it was simply a bottle of table quality which could be used for whatever purpose the occasion required. The earliest mention of carafes that the writer has seen occurs in a bill dated 15 November 1745, drawn by John Taylor, which includes the item '4 1/2 pint water carrofts — 3 shillings'. Probably they were simple globular bottles, since the half-pint capacity did not give much room for variation. We have to remember here that up until 1824 the English pint contained only 16.654 fluid ounces. Their size can be deduced from the half-pint carafe in fig. 2, which is 5 1/2 inches high by 3 % inches wide. In the second half of the 18th century carafes appear in larger sizes and more elegant shapes. Some were a more graceful version of the globular bottle (fig. 2a) and others followed closely the style and decoration of the decanter of their period (figs. 3 and 4). Until we reach the period of illustrated pattern books, catalogues and advertisements, reasonably exact dating is only possible where the vessel can be clearly identified in a painting or engraving of known date as in Parker's trade-card of the 1770s (fig. 5), which shows the little globular bottle cut in the flat facets of the 1760s and 1770s. No doubt these carafes were also used for wine and ale since hard and fast rules about what liquid went into what vessel were as unlikely to have been observed then as now. Indeed what a vessel was called and what it was used for was far from straightforward. For example in 1772 an American newspaper adver- tisement for imported glass listed not only 'carrofts, best London double flint' but also 'Decanters, half- gallon, ground and labelled Water'; and almost a hundred years later Ramsay observed in his Reminiscences that with old-fashioned Scotch people 'the crystal jug or decanter in which water was placed upon the table was a caraff. Carafes or carafe-like bottles seem to have been made specially for wine. The George's Hill Glasshouse in Dublin advertised in 1752 "all sorts of the newest fashion drinking Glasses, Water bottles, Claret and Burgundy ditto, Decanters, Jugs . . .." How nice it would be to know what distinguished the Water bottle from the Claret bottle and the Claret from the Burgundy. Apart from its household uses the simple carafe was probably the ordinary serving bottle of the taverns, inns and pleasure gardens. The detail from Debucourt's engraving `La Promenade publique' published in 1792 shows a carafe on a table in a public garden in Paris (fig. 6). An Act of 1636 made it illegal to serve wine in bottles in inns, taverns and other public places. Measures were required to be used by law but to what extent the carafe itself served as a legal measure is not clear. Obviously the vessel was not intended to be filled to the top like a milk bottle but it is not easy to guess where the pint or half-pint level is going to come. Sometimes, but by no means always, this level will correspond with a well-defined decorative feature, such as the base of the neck fluting or a horizontal 86 band of cutting (fig. 2). Certainly the London clubs served wine to their members in carafes throughout the 19th century and do so to the present day. The type of carafe most frequently used in the older clubs seems to be the globular bottle. These small globular carafes, highly cut (fig. 8) or comparatively plain (fig. 7), are characteristic of the styles attributed to the period from around 1780 to about 1830. They can be seen in the advertisements of Apsley Pellatt, the pattern book of Samuel Miller of Waterford, and various other places. Larger vessels matching the shape and size of their decanters formed part of the heavy cut services of the 1820s and '30s. The Duke of Wellington's service, thought to be Irish glass of about 1820-30, contains carafes of one pint capacity identical in shape and decoration with the decanters. The handsome quart carafe in the Bristol Museum differs from contem- porary straight-sided decanters only in its wider neck and the absence of a stopper (fig. 9). Throughout the first half of the 19th century water bottles were made in the style of the glass known as `Nailsea', in which the decoration usually consisted of bands of glass of different colours forming patterns of loops or stripes. The best of these Nailsea carafes are of a well proportioned simple blown shape with a globular body sometimes slightly flattened, and a straight neck and plain lip. Bristol Museum has an example with its matching tumbler, formerly owned by Lady Elton of Clevedon Court. At what point it became customary to make a carafe and matching tumbler as a set, is not certain. Advertisements and sale reports in Irish papers suggest that they were certainly treated as sets from the beginning of the 19th century, and a Waterford account book of 1817 lists: '1 pint croft and tumber - 1 s. 4d.' An early matching set which may well date from the 1820s is shown in fig. 10. In the 1849 Exhibition of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, an "Opal Caraffe and Tumbler" were shown by J.F. Christy; and more prosaically, a "Water Bottle and Glass" by Apsley Pellatt, which were 'richly engraved' with a water-lily pattern. The only carafe illustrated in the Art Journal Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851 is shown with a match- ing tumbler again decorated with a plant design (fig. 11). The Official Catalogue illustrated a set of 'Anglo- Venetian gilt and frosted glass' shown by Apsley Pellatt, which included a quite remarkable carafe and glass. The carafe had a small globular. ody and a long thick tapering neck with the tumbler perched precariously on top, apparently separated by many inches from the body. The Exhibition of 1862 produced an even more exuberant crop of table glass. Eight carafes are illus- trated in the Art Journal Catalogue, four of them forming part of table sets. In each case the body of the carafe follows its decanter in shape and decoration although of course necks and lips vary considerably (figs. 12 and 13). These elaborate exhibition pieces are hard to find today but there is a carafe in the Victoria & Albert Museum which appears to be virtually identical with the one exhibited in 1862 by Pellatt (fig. 12), although it is not so labelled. From now on illustrations are comparatively plenti- ful, particularly with the publication of the trade papers, notably Pottery Gazette from 1880. Mainly concerned with the bread-and-butter trade in china and glass the advertisements show that some carafes of the plain shapes of thirty or forty years earlier continued steadily throughout the second half of the century. But they also make it clear that the interest in ancient shapes and forms which the Great Exhibition had stimulated in all the arts had a considerable effect on everyday glass. It is their stylistic origins that give the new carafes of the second half of the century a special interest. Glassmakers had been experimenting with classical shapes and techniques since the Adam period. Accord- ing to Apsley Pellatt the Roman technique of pillar moulding had been revived in England in the 1830s. It allowed wide ribs or pillars to be moulded on the outside of a vessel without correspondingly deep grooves being formed on the inside. Pellatt illustrated pillar moulded carafes in his price list of 1839-40. The pillars appear only on the lower part of the bowl, the upper part being cut with flutes. The type most commonly found today, however, is the type shown in the catalogue of John Ford of Edinburgh about 1875 in which the pillars reach to the top of the body (fig. 14a). In this possibly debased form the pattern lacks the solid elegance of the pillar cutting of the early years of the century (fig. 8a), and the delicacy of the simpler rib moulding (fig. 15). The various forms of ribbed carafe are still fairly easily found. They are of ancient lineage. They can be seen on the glass-seller's tree (fig. 1); and fig 15 shows a typical example, possibly of the 1870s; and Ravenscroft advertised them in 1677. These 19th century ribbed carafes may have been a conscious revival of an old form or the form may have persisted through the centuries, or it may be that the limitations of glass as a material bring craftsmen back again and again to similar shapes and forms of decoration. The tumbler sold with the ribbed carafe usually carries very short ribs which look more like pinching than ribbing but this characteristic is confirmed by contemporary illustrations. The pattern is one of the lightest and most attractive of the moulded patterns. Moulded carafes form a large and interesting group at the cheaper end of the market. It is possible to find traces of 17th century decoration in some of them, including heavy gadrooning, all-over diaper patterns, 87 and a heavy collar where the neck joins the body (fig. 14b). Simple fluting either cut or moulded sometimes appears on the neck. The three-piece moulds which are said to have been increasingly used from the 1830s produced attractive 'copies' of cut glass. Fig. 16 shows a water bottle following closely the style and shape of the vessels in Samuel Miller's Waterford pattern book, which no doubt were almost as common in England as in Ireland. The bottle could conceivably be dated in the 'forties, but the danger of dating moulded pieces lies in the long life of a mould, since provided a pattern continued to sell to an unsophisticated public there would be no pressure on a manufacturer to scrap a mould before it wore out. The success of the earlier moulded imitations is said to have contributed to the decline in popularity of heavily cut glass in the early Victorian years. W.A. Thorpe remarks that a taste developed in the 'fifties for round bodied decanters and carafes. The cutting was often restricted to fluting on the neck, a star on the bottom, and round the body a band or two of the shallow circular or oval discs called 'thumbprints' or 'printies'. These discs came from the last years of the 18th century. In 1807 a service supplied to the Prince of Wales included '6 Thumbprint Water Carafes' etched with a Grecian border. In Nineteenth Century British Glass Hugh Wakefield illustrates one of these carafes bought in 1851 by the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Paris. The carafe on the right of fig. 17 is almost identical to this in shape and cutting. Similar patterns are advertised off and on for the rest of the century. Sometimes the matching tumbler is cut in flutes, sometimes with a row of discs, and often it has a star base. Engraving and etching were what really appealed most to the Victorians as methods of decorating glass. Apsley Pellatt was already engraving 'richly' in 1849, and J.G. Green's exhibit of engraved glass at the Great Exhibition was greatly admired. By the 1862 Exhibition engraving was at a peak. Engraving or etching, alone or in combination with cutting, appear on every carafe illustrated in the catalogue (figs. 12 and 13). Exhibition pieces, of course, were made regardless of cost and everyday glass was far more modestly decorated, often with simple geometrical patterns or with patterns based on plant forms such as the bulrush pattern seen in fig. 18. Plant designs were sufficiently common by 1849 to attract adverse comment in the Journal of Design and Manufactures. But despite this the popularity of the naturalistic patterns grew. The Paris Conservatoire bought, in 1851, a small carafe and tumbler by F. & C. Osler engraved with a water plant pattern. They are illustrated by Mr. Wakefield. Indeed, it would be possible to form an extensive collection of 19th century carafes decorated with different plant motifs. Oak, ivy, holly, thistle, oats, fuchsia, sunflower, lily-of-the-valley, and a host of floral meanders of all kinds flourished throughout the century. The fruiting vine, a reliable old standby from the 18th century, carried on through the years to the present day (fig. 19). The fern pattern, said to have originated in Edinburgh in the '60s and most commonly seen on jugs, was frequently advertised as a decoration for carafes. The success of the pattern in its various forms was no doubt due to the passion for ferns which seized the Victorians in the '40s and '50s, when the first volumes of the great illustrated fern studies began to appear. Fern patterns persisted beyond the end of the century possibly because they were technically undemanding, though seldom particularly attractive. A notable exception is the delicate maiden hair design on the Dublin carafe illustrated in Westropp's Irish Glass; this is dated about 1870 and was probably the work of a German craftsman living in Ireland. It is interesting that a firm of Bohemian immigrants working in Edinburgh is believed to have originated the fern pattern. The engraved vessels of J.G. Green's exhibit in 1851 were all based on classical shapes — 'the forms are borrowed from the best antiquities'. These forms had interested glassmakers for some years and one shape in particular was to dominate the field until the present day. This was a shape derived from the oenochoe, the Greek wine jug with a three- or four- lipped rim, and usually an egg-shaped body on a foot. It can be seen too in Egyptian glass of the 9th century B.C. The well known carafe in the Victoria & Albert Museum with a reed pattern, designed by Richard Redgrave in 1847, is an early example of the oenochoe in carafe form; and at least four carafes in this form were exhibited in 1862 (fig. 20). By the end of the century this carafe was to be seen in most of the great restaurants of the world. It is still going strong today in the more classical establishments. But classical shapes were not the only source of inspiration. The carafe in fig. 21 shows another favourite Victorian shape already well established in 1851 and still being made. It is an easy shape to grip, with a low centre of gravity which may partly account for the considerable number of decanters that survive. But its long neck makes it a difficult vessel to clean out and the carafes seem to have been made almost exclusively as part of table services. The most common 19th century carafe of all, the bedroom water bottle, shows traces of Islamic influence. Thousands, perhaps millions, must have been made. They stood on every bedside table and every washstand well within living memory and thousands still exist, mostly in cheap thin glass. But the characteristic short wide funnel neck with no lip, so frequently seen in Islamic glass, seems to have 88 emerged only in the '80s. In their 'List of New Patterns' published towards the end of 1884 Sowerby's of Gateshead illustrated carafes with wide lipless necks slightly indented where they joined the body. The wide funnel neck had taken its settled form in the advertisement of the London wholesalers J. Stembridge in 1889. The body of their carafe was first called 'Tall Shape' and then 'Egg Shape', and this kind of body remained the most common (figs. 22, 23). It is in the straight-sided forms which developed later in better quality glass that the influence of Islamic-Egyptian glass is most strongly suggested (figs. 24, 25). Two other noteworthy groups survive from the second half of the century: imported carafes and filter- base carafes. The trade figures published in Pottery Gazette show that the value of imported manufactured glass had risen to over a million pounds a year by 1890. Foreign glass warehousemen advertised carafes and occasionally illustrated them from the earliest number of the Gazette, mainly from the Belgian glassworks of Val St. Lambert, but also from Bohemian and French sources. A correspondent in the early '90s asks how the home trade is to compete with the imports when 'a bottle and up (the pattern usually used in bedrooms) are quoted . . . at 2s. 7d. a dozen'. No doubt a good proportion of the poor thin glass bedroom bottles were of foreign manufacture. Capacity, though never a wholly reliable guide, may give an indication of foreign provenance. Some carafes when filled look more at home with litres than pints (fig. 26), but foreign glass is too complex a field to enter here. Finally a group of quite distinct and rather boring vessels, the filter-base carafes.. From about 1854 there seems to have been public concern about the purity of tap water. Filters large and small were advertised consistently by a number of firms during this period. The usual form of table filter can be seen in fig. 29. Water was poured into the funnel and seeped through the purifying carbon or charcoal block into the carafe below. The carafe had a broad squat body and a wide lip (fig. 28). It was made in 1, 1 1 / 2 , 2, 3 and 4 pint sizes. Later some makers offered a form with a handle and spout which must have been a considerable improvement, for even a 3 pint wide-necked carafe full of water is by no means easy to handle. The filter base is outside the mainstream of table carafes but as it is still sometimes found, particularly in the larger sizes, it is useful to be able to recognize it. The form of the carafe most in favour today seems to be the high waisted flask shaped bottle. At its best one of the most elegant of all the carafes, this flask appears in Roman, Venetian and Spanish glass, with a few frills in 18th century English glass, and in a subdued form it was issued to the Royal Navy almost to the present day (fig. 27). 89 Figure I. A French glass seller of the first half of the 16th century, from a print. Figure 2. Carafes containing the old measures in use before the Act of 1824 established the pint of 20 fluid ounces. L. to r., quart 33.30oz.; pint 16.65oz.; half-pint 8.33oz. H. 8%in. (22.2cm.); 6%in. (17.5cm.); 5''/bin. (13cm.). 90 91 Figure 3. (a) A pint carafe with a wide mouth, scale-cut neck and central band of tulip-cutting, c.1775. H.6% in. (1 7.5cm.); (b) A pint decanter of the same period of similar shape and decoration. Figure 4. (a) A pint carafe with diamond-faceted neck and central band of tulip-cutting, c. 1775. H. 7in. (18cm.); (b) A quart decanter of similar style. Figure 5. Detail from the trade-card of William Parker, a cut-glass manufacturer established in Fleet Street, London, in the 1770s and 1 780s. Figure 6. Detail of L.-P. Debucourt's engraving La Promenade publique, published in 1792. The carafe appears to be cut on neck and body in a style similar to the large carafe in fig. 8. a Figure 7. Group of early 19th century carafes with two or three neck rings and restrained cutting. These carafes are comparatively easily found and sets of two or more are not uncommon. a b c d Figure 8. Group of carafes of the late 18th and early 19th centuries showing most of the principal cutting patterns of the period including prismatic step cutting, pillar-fluting, relief diamonds, strawberry diamonds and panels of fine diamonds. 92 Figure 9. A quart carafe, c.1820. Bristol Museum. Figure 10. A heavily cut carafe and tumbler of the 1820s; an early example of a matched set. H.5 V2in. (14cm.). Figure 11. "A Water- carafi and Tumbler adorned with the fuchsia plant". Shown by f. G. Green at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Figure 12. Part of a table service shown by Pellatt & Co. at the 1862 Exhibition. The carafe is almost identical with one in the Victoria and Albert Museum. 94 ?jet...0N Figure 13. Table service shown by Naylor of Princes Street, Cavendish Square, at the 1862 Exhibition. a Figure 14. A group of moulded carafes showing 1. to r. pillar-moulding, moulded flutes and collar ring, all-over diaper pattern, and gadrooning. H. 5 % in. (14.5cm.); 5 % in. (13.5cm.); 6/2in. (16.5cm.); 5%in. (14.2cm.). 95 Figure 15. The continuity of the ribbed pattern, in a Figure 16. Carafe made in a three-piece mould in carafe of about 1870. imitation of the type of cut-glass decanter in this form seen in Samuel Miller's Waterford pattern books of the 1830s. Figure 17. Carafes cut with neck fluting and the circular and oval discs called printies". Vessels of this shape and decoration are found from the 1850s onwards. 96 Figure 18. Flask-shaped water bottle engraved with the Figure 19. Half-pint carafe engraved with fruiting vine bulrush pattern, c. 1850. H. 8 in. (21cm.). pattern, c.1850. H.5 Y2 in. (14cm.). Figure 20. 20. An oenochoe-shape carafe exhibited by Pellatt & Co. at the 1862 Exhibition. Figure 21. The decoration on this half-pint carafe was one of the first patterns to be produced by the mechanical engraving machine, in use by 1865. H. 6in. (15cm.). 97 urea quarter pm, rut tia Figure 22. Carafe and flue putt cut Eat flutes, to tumbler advertised by Rea Ortat .51140 Water * 5i 6 9. 816, tot J. Stembridge in Pottery • 6 Are t ar,„ end , Batters or Gazette in 1889. 0 aft latex, en petty , gi O , Oval and Board 16vhca, C ..mpor O t ' 'wards, Jellies. Plagar 01... Ware mad. t Bohemian Old.., row Deearat 1013$ I is Cane; of SO =41 ,7/7", o quart /wk.° 61,7 of 30 do- e ut3. I/6, amid tor, e. fr, tot. or as dos. t'4'trer(- reci No. 6.. Figure 23. Bedroom bottle and glass as advertised in 1913. G 103. Bedroom Bottle and Glass. ilk Nicely etched design. 10d. each. Figure 24. Carafe with cylindrical body and short funnel neck. H. 6 % in. (17.2cm.). Figure 25. Egyptian or Persian bottle of 10th 07 11th century. H.3 %in (9.2cm.). Victoria and Albert Museum. 98 Figure 27. A modern carafe issued to the Royal Navy. Tit 9MLY MEDAL AWA1010 FOR CLASS FILTER AT IRTERVATIONAL MEALIN L11111111011. "SILVER MEDAL.. SILVER MEDAL ILLICIM RAMSEy AND THE ORTH BRITISH CLASS COMPANY. .2 • LATE 33 2 i81 Airringdon Street. Figure 29. Table filters advertised n Pottery Gazette in 1885. Figure 26. Cut-glass carafes of fine quality. (a) A Bohemian shape. H. 6 Ygin. (16.2cm.); (b) An interpretation in cut-glass of a Venetian form. H.7in. (17.8cm.). These carafes may well be imported. Figure 28. Carafe of 3-pint capacity. The broad squat shape and wide lip suggest that this is a filter base. 99 ADVERTISEMENTS Rare BEILBY MASONIC firing glass in superb condition, the round funnel bowl decorated with masonic symbols in white and black enamel on a double series opaque twist stem and terraced foot. 4ins. c.1765. 25 Burlington Arcade, Piccadilly London W1V 9AD 01-493 6557 Geralc Sattin Ltc 101 lla Henrietta Place, London W1M 9AG Telephone 01-580 9844 102 Maureen Thompson Sun House, Long Melford, Suffolk TELEPHONE 0787 78252 An unrecorded portrait glass of Nelson, with a full masted frigate on the reverse Probably executed to commemorate the Battle of Trafalgar. c. 1805. 103 SHIRLEY WARREN 6744/4 ma Wo/nAteided4Idivree Ua,44 A rare stemmed double B-handled syllabub glass, c.1730. Exhibitor at major multi-day Fairs countrywide See Trade Press for details or By Appointment Only 42 KINGSWOOD AVENUE, SANDERSTEAD, SURREY CR2 9DQ. Telephone: 01-657 1751 104 E.S. Phillips & Sons STAINED GLASS ANTIQUES EXPORT MANUFACTURER AND RESTORER Above — Saint Michael, Willey Court, Worcestershire (18th century glass restoration). Left — An artist reproducing a design from a broken section of glass. 99 Portobello Road, London W11 Telephone 01-229 2113 105 Wine glass. Pan topped round funnel bowl over a mixed twist stem having an opaque white tape and an airtwist spiral cable. Domed foot. c. 1760. John A Brooks GANTIQUE GLASS 2, KNIGHTS CRESCENT, ROTHLEY, LEICESTERSHIRE. Telephone: LEICESTER 0533 302625 by appointment only. 18TH AND 19TH CENTURY DRINKING GLASSES, CUT GLASS AND TABLE GLASS. 19TH CENTURY COLOURED, DECORATIVE AND PRESSED GLASS. 20TH CENTURY DECORATIVE AND ART GLASS TO ABOUT 1950. OUT OF PRINT BOOKS ON GLASS. I exhibit at antiques fairs throughout the country. REFERENCE BOOKS ON GLASS We issue regular catalogues of books on Antiques and Collecting which always contain a substantial number of books on Glass (including many scarce and out-of-print titles). Are you on our Mailing List? We shall be pleased to post you a free copy of our current catalogue — anywhere in the world. We are also always pleased to buy books in our specialist field in any quantity. JOHN IVES — ANTIQUARIAN BOOKS 5 Normanhurst Drive, St. Margarets, Twickenham, Middlesex TW1 1NA Telephone 01-892 6265 106 . 0 1— • \',..,, , $r . .. . ,, , , .... ., . , 0) P hi llip s .. . ..„ , „ FINE AR T A UCTIO NE ERS & VAL UERS S I NCE 1 796 4 '... B len s to c k Hous e , . „ . . , . . • - , , ,. , . , ,, .. .. , . 4 -, . , - r ' i ': ' ' '''" - ' '' ART N OU V E AU & . . , . . ' : '' '' '' '''' 9 - '- ... ' ' t '"i'l - D E CO R AT IV E ART S k , o i li i ; .. : - -, *. i . "', . .. , * ' . ' , . ; , , , j i dli 4 111Pal k i., ' ' ' P hi llip s ho lds reg u lar sp e c ia lis t s a les t hr oug ho u t t ok * >

. t

,
,
. .

b
A

H
.

P
r
2
:

‘ ,

s
tu
t
he

d
i
yc
oo

Ce
r

am
ics.

r
ta
o
c

f
t
A

Ar
t

i.
.
h
F2
oB
o9
ur

ra
6

fu
r

t
he
r

ao
r
u2
o
,

6
6
02
,

De
x
iit

cno2
oin3
o
ra
a3
r

in
form
a
tion,

Deco

tive
Ar
t

no
t,

o
n

“.

iii

141 ‘

11
6-
17
11″

ale

na
ds
e

,…
.

.
,

‘

4
1
1
Ma
ilit
‘
–

4181
0
1
.
01
M
`”

”

A la
rg
e

lli ena
me

lle
d g
la

ss
ja
r
d
in
ier

e
p
a
in
te

d in
c
o

loure
d e
na

me
ls

ilA

it
h s
inu
ous

bra
nc

hes
o
f
mag

no
lia
an

d a
p
r

ay
ing
ma
n

t
is,

he
ig

h
te
ne
d
w
it

h g
il
d
ing,

supp
o

r
te
d
o
n
a
g
ilt

bronze
s

ta
n
d re
s

t
ing
on

,
.

”

.
i

he
bac

ks
o
f
t
hre

e
Jap
a

n
ese

“Or
i.

”
2
9.
5cm

hig
h,

35cm

dia
m.

R
EA
LI
SED

£3,

700

B
le
n
he

New

Bon
d
St
Lon

do
n

W1
Y

O
AS,

Te
l:

01-
629
6
602

,
o,

O
ND

ON
–
PARI

S •
NE
W

YO
RK –

GE
NEV
A –

BRUS
SEL

t
”

t
een
sa
le
roo

ms
t
hro
ug
hou

t
t
he
Un

ite
d
King
dom.

–

Mem

bers
o

f
t
he
Soc
ie

ty
o
f
Fine

Ar
t

Auc
t
io
neers.

107

3B BURLINGTON GARDENS, LONDON

01-437 4975

MON-FRI

10
–
5.30

108

SHEPPARD & COOPER LIMITED

35 St. George Street, London
W1R 9FA

Tel: 01-629 6489

—
4

A large Nuremberg goblet, wheel-engraved with a battle scene in the manner of
Johann Wolfgang Schmidt, c.I705.

Formerly in the collection of Leopold Blumka, New York.

109

DELOMOSNE

& SON LTD

Antique and Fine Art Dealers

Members of The British Antique Dealers’ Association Ltd
A handsome baluster goblet with wide angular knop in
heavy dark metal.

Height: 225mm. English c.1710-25

4 Campden Hill Road,

Kensington High Street, W8 7DU
Telephone: 01-937 1804

110

I3ISTIES

Unrecorded signed Royal armorial goblet by William Beilby, the reverse inscribed
Succefs
to the African trade of WHITE
–
HAVEN,
signed
Beilby junr. invt. &Pinxt.

Sold in June 1985 for
456,160.

Christie’s hold regular sales of Glass and Paperweights.

Enquiries: Rachel Russell

8 King Street, St. James’s, London
SW1Y 6QT
Tel: (01) 839 9060 Telex: 916429

1 1 1

To the Efteemed READERS of the GLASS CIRCLE [5]

The Editors of this Review refpectfully take this

Public method of informing the Nobility, Gentry

and all Purchafers of the Work that there remain

a few copies of the Glass Circle [1], [2], [3] and [4]

Containing among other curious Articles by Eminent Authorities—

The Glass Circle 1

THE HOARE BILLS FOR GLASS by the late W.A. Thorpe

ENAMELLING AND GILDING ON GLASS by R.J. Charleston

GLASS AND BRITISH PHARMACY 1600-1900 by J.K. Crellin and J.R. Scott
ENGLISH ALE GLASSES 1685-1830 by P.C. Trubridge
SCENT BOTTLES by Edmund Launert

The Glass Circle 2

A GLASSMAKER’S BANKRUPTCY SALE by R.J. Charleston
THE BATHGATE BOWL by Barbara Morris
THE ENGLISH ALE GLASSES, GROUP 3,

The Tall Balusters and Flute-Glasses for Champagne and Ale, by P.C. Trubridge

THE PUGH GLASSHOUSES IN DUBLIN by Mary Boydell

GLASS IN 18TH CENTURY NORWICH by Sheenah Smith

WHO WAS GEORGE RAVENSCROFT? by Rosemary Rendel

HOW DID GEORGE RAVENSCROFT DISCOVER LEAD CRYSTAL?
by D.C. Watts

The Glass Circle 3

THE APSLEY PELLATTS by J.A.H. Rose
DECORATION OF GLASS

PART 4: PRINTING ON GLASS. PART 5: ACID-ETCHING
by R.J. Charleston

THE JACOBITE ENGRAVERS by G.B. Seddon

“MEN OF GLASS”: A PERSONAL VIEW OF THE DE BONGAR FAMILY
IN THE 16TH AND 17TH CENTURIES by G. Bungard

THE ENGLISH ALE GLASSES, GROUP 4, Ale/beer glasses
in the 19th century, by P.C. Trubridge

The Glass Circle
4

SOME ENGLISH GLASS-ENGRAVERS:

LATE 18th-EARLY 19TH CENTURY by R.J. Charleston

ENGLISH ROCK CRYSTAL GLASS, 1878-1925 by Ian Wolfenden
REVERSE PAINTING ON GLASS by Rudy Eswarin
THE MANCHESTER GLASS INDUSTRY by Roger Dodsworth

THE RICKETTS FAMILY AND THE PHOENIX GLASSHOUSE, BRISTOL
by Cyril Weeden

Copies of the above may be obtained from

Shirley Warren, 42 Kingswood Avenue, Sanderstead, Surrey CR2 9DQ.

Telephone: 01-657 1751

113

–

Join

Search

Member

Join

Search

Member

Join

Search

Member

Recent Posts

Address

Email

Instagram

Facebook