Glass (for drinking) (Wineglass)

Description

This nonlead (soda) glass façon de Venise (Venetian fashion) wineglass features a conical bowl supported by an elaborate, so-called serpent or winged stem. Central to the stem is a "rope" of twisted colorless, white and blue glass threads, arranged in a broad, flat, openwork form. The outer edges of this element display applied clear glass threads that variously were pincered with waffle-pattern tools or have (near the top) been drawn out into stylized bird- or dragon-head elements. All of this rests on a slightly waisted vertical shaft and a low plain conical foot with a broken pontil on the underside. Variations on wing or serpent glass forms originated at Murano (near Venice) in the late 1500s. Although the manufacturing techniques were a strictly protected secret, knowledge of how such vessels were made leaked out and similar glasses eventually were made in other regions including what is now the Netherlands and Germany. Somewhat surprisingly, such delicate and fragile vessels also wended their way to colonial America, and fragments of such glasses have been recovered from archaeological sites, including among others, St. Mary's City in Maryland. (See Anne Dowling Grulich, “Façon de Venise Drinking Vessels on the Chesapeake Frontier: Examples from St. Mary’s City, Maryland,” Historic St. Mary’s City Research Series, No. 7 [2004], p. 11.)