38 
HOUSE & GARDEN 
ENGLISH ENGRAVED AND INSCRIBED GLASSES 
GARDNER TEALL 
Readers of House & Garden who are interested in antiques and curios are invited to address any inquiries on these subjects to the Collectors’ 
Department, House & Garden, 440 Fourth Avenue, New York, N. Y. Inquiries should be accompanied by stamps for return postage. Foreign 
correspondents may enclose postage stamps of their respective countries. 
T HERE are few general collectors who 
have not, at some time, come under 
the spell of old glass and its enchantment. 
It is remarkable that objects so fragile in 
fabric should have survived the vicissitudes 
of centuries, as have specimens not only of 
European glass but also of the ancient glass 
of Phoenician, Greek 
and Roman manu¬ 
facture as well. 
However, it is not 
with ancient glass or 
with European glass 
in general that we 
shall now concern 
ourselves, nor yet 
with the whole mat¬ 
ter of English glass, 
fascinating and al¬ 
luring though the 
subject may be. In¬ 
stead, we shall rec¬ 
ord here a few notes 
concerning English 
engraved and in¬ 
scribed glasses that 
may be helpful and 
of interest to read¬ 
ers of this depart¬ 
ment. 
Glass - making in 
England had an 
early origin, derived, 
it would seem prob¬ 
able, from the Ro¬ 
man invaders. We 
know it to have flourished to some extent 
at Cheddingfold in the 13th Century, con¬ 
tinuing there for several hundred years, as 
we glean from a reference in Thomas Char- 
nock’s “Breviary of Philosophy,” published 
in 1557, wherein is written: “You may 
send to Cheddingfold to the glass-maker 
and desire him to blow thee a glass after 
thy devise.” An entry in Evelyn’s Diary 
for February 10, 1685, refers to “his Maj¬ 
esty’s health being drunk in a flint glass 
of a yard long, by the Sheriff, Commander, 
Officers and Chiefe gentlemen.” 
This reminds us that flint glass was dis¬ 
covered and came into vogue prior to 1680, 
for in that year its fame had caused it to 
be so highly regarded elsewhere in Europe 
that manufactories to compete with Eng¬ 
lish ones were established at Liege in that 
year. The early flint glass of England dif¬ 
fered somewhat from the later product. 
Probably the flint glass as we know it now 
was not introduced before 1730, or per¬ 
fected until over a century later. 
Of all the English glass none is more 
interesting and more beautiful than that of 
the 18th Century, and of the various objects 
fashioned from it none are more attractive 
than the drinking-glasses of this period. 
Particularly is this true of the engraved and 
inscribed drinking-glasses which collectors 
now eagerly seek. Rare, indeed, these 
glasses have become, and fortunate is the 
ing” glasses in the Leckie Collection, now 
owned by the Brooklyn Institute of Arts 
and Sciences (through whose courtesy the 
accompanying illustrations are presented), 
are engraved with grapevine designs, arms 
and inscribed. Of course such engraved 
and inscribed glasses are of greater interest 
and rarity than those 
which are without 
decoration or in¬ 
scription. 
The method of clas¬ 
sification of English 
drinking-glass takes 
into consideration 
the types of the feet, 
the types of the 
bowls and the types 
of the stems. There 
are the plain-footed 
glass, the glass with 
the folded foot (so 
called because the 
outer circle of the 
foot was folded 
back beneath the 
foot of the glass to 
strengthen it), the 
domed foot (shaped 
as its name sug¬ 
gests), and the 
domed and folded 
foot glass (a combi¬ 
nation of dome and 
fold). The folded 
foot is a type which 
indicates early origin, just as those glasses 
which have the foot broader than the bowl 
indicate their origin to have been prior to 
the first quarter of the 19th Century. 
As to the types of bowls, there are the 
drawn bowl (bowl and stem drawn from 
a single piece of glass, as in the glasses 
of the 17th Century) ; the bell-shaped bowl, 
the waist-formed bell bowl, the waisted 
bowl, the ovoid bowl, the straight-sided 
bowl, the straight-sided rectangular bowl, 
the ogee bowl, the lipped ogee bowl and the 
double ogee form. The first glass shown in 
the first illustration is an example of the 
straight-sided rectangular bowl and plain 
foot. Three of the other glasses shown in 
this illustration have straight-sided bowls, 
while the glass which stands second from 
the right has a bell-shaped bowl sunk in the 
stem. The inscribed Williamite “Orange” 
glass, shown as the first glass in the fourth 
illustration, is an unusually fine example of 
a glass with a bell bowl and a baluster stem. 
Now the waist-formed bell-shaped (waist- 
ed-bell) bowl is rarely met with—the early 
18th Century marks its decline—and the 
waisted bowl is uncommon also. The bell¬ 
shaped bowls seem longest to have main¬ 
tained favor. The Bristol Glass Works 
originated the ogee bowl shapes, which 
date from the middle of the 18th Century. 
As to the types of stems, the earliest in 
design is that of the baluster stem (in use 
collector who comes across a “find” of the 
sort. English glass of the 18th Century, 
though less ornamental than Venetian, was, 
nevertheless, more practically utilitarian. 
Engraved tumbler commemorating the corona¬ 
tion of George IV of England. Collection of the 
Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences 
In respect to the spirit glasses and rum¬ 
mers, which succeeded ale-tankards of 
metal and of pottery, this is particularly 
true. No “glasse of Venice” could have 
withstood the table impact which the Eng¬ 
lish 18th Century spirit glasses were de¬ 
signed to survive, a virtue which gave them 
the name of “firing glasses,” as the setting 
down of them by a company surrounding 
the jovial board produced a noise like a 
miniature cannonade. Some of these “fir¬ 
Five 1 8th Century 
Jacobite spirit 
glasses engraved 
with Stuart emblems 
From the collection 
of the Brooklyn In¬ 
stitute of Arts and 
Sciences 
