These are the favourite quarry of the hunter for old glass. I prefer the more uncommon and out-of-the-way pieces myself, but the old wine glasses, goblets, cordial glasses, rummers, ale glasses, cider glasses, and so forth are so interesting, often so beautiful, and sometimes so quaint, that I do not wonder at the eager collecting of them.

Seeking as I do right through this book to state general rules and tests which the beginner may apply to all glass he comes across, I now mention the general features of old drinking glasses.

THE LUMPY STEM

In days when men did not rise from the dinner-table quite so easily as they fell under it, the stem of a drinking glass must be thick, lest it snap in the convulsive hand, and was more safely held when it was also lumpy or bulbous—“knopped” and “baluster”-like are other terms for it: the fingers clung to the knobs.

THE STOUT STEM

Even when the bulbous or lumpy stem ceased to be the rule, a thick stem—three or four times the thickness of modern wine-glass stems—was the rule, for the reason just given.

THE EXTENSIVE FOOT

Similarly, old drinking glasses were always made with very broad “feet” or bases; usually the foot had a larger circumference than the bowl. A semi-drunken hand, setting the vessel down on the table, might leave it rocking for two or three seconds, but the foot was so broad that it could hardly rock over.

THE RAISED FOOT

Because of the pontil-mark being often a knob, or protuberance, the foot of the glass must not wholly rest upon the table, but touch it near the circumference of the foot only, lest the knob at the end of the stem should prevent the glass standing level, or should scratch the mahogany.

THE DOMED FOOT

Some of the oldest glasses, in which the pontil-mark is quite a large protuberance, stand upon feet which, flat upon the table at and near the edge, rise domelike in the centre. These dome feet are seldom symmetrical; made by hand, the flat part is usually wider on one side of the dome than on the other.

THE HIGH INSTEP FOOT

As the pontil-mark became smaller and not so rough, the dome foot gave place to one which is mainly flat at the base but slightly conical, rising like a low round hillock, to join the stem: seen in profile, these somewhat resemble a leg and a foot with a high instep. No seventeenth-or eighteenth-century stemmed drinking glass except a “firing” glass has a foot with an uniformly flat section.

THE HEMMED OR FOLDED FOOT

Many old wine glasses are chipped at the edge of the foot; this was due to carelessness in the scullery sometimes, but often to careless use by convivial guests. Therefore glass-makers learned the advantage of folding the edge of the foot under, like a hem in needlework; a rounded edge, less likely to be chipped, was thus obtained. This “hem” is nearly always irregular, being turned in more at one part of the base than another. As a rule, the presence of a folded foot indicates that the glass was made before 1760.

THE “NORWICH” FOOT

Nobody knows what kind of glasses were made at Norwich or Lynn, but there is a supposition that horizontal lines, in the bowl or in the foot, mean “Norwich-made”: the foot is slightly terraced, so to speak.

THE FIRING GLASS FOOT

There is, I believe, in certain Lodges, a semi-ritual practice of hammering on the table with the feet of glasses, rhythmically, after a toast, somewhat in the style of applause called “Kentish fire.” This seems never to have been done with wine glasses, but old cordial or spirit glasses exist in considerable numbers which were expressly made for the purpose, and furnished with flat feet an eighth of an inch thick or more, so that they should not crack by concussion; in these old “firing-glasses,” too, the foot is bigger in circumference than the bowl.

GENERAL RULES

These considerations apply to stemmed glasses for ale, beer, cider, and cordials also; and to rummers and grog glasses upon stems that are short but stout. Therefore a genuine English or Irish drinking glass of seventeenth-, eighteenth-, or early nineteenth-century make has, in addition to the tint, ring, quality, pontil-mark, workmanship, and signs of use, a stout stem and an extensive, raised foot.

About 1830, the six-bottle men being all dead, and even the three-bottle men becoming rare, the thickness of the stem and the extensiveness of the foot could safely be reduced; the pontil-mark, too, was smaller, and the foot of a glass could be made with a lower instep, so to speak. Therefore a thin stem and a foot not bigger, or smaller, than the top of the bowl, with no pontil-mark, or hardly any, signify that the glass was made during Victoria’s reign or just before it began.

“THUMB” GLASSES

“Thumb” glasses are those in which the external surface of the bowl is pitted with depressions the size of a finger-end, so that the shaking hand of the bibulous might be the less likely to let the glass drop. They are usually tall of bowl and short of stem, but rather big of foot.

THE SQUARE FOOT

Old glasses with thick square bases appear to belong to the end of the eighteenth century, when the “Empire” style was influencing manufacture: often the base is of inferior workmanship to the bowl.

THE FEET OF TUMBLERS

Even the bases of tumblers were made thick, though they were smaller in circumference than the top of the tumbler.