Description:
Blown, colorless glass mug with a strap handle and fluted base. The rim has a gilt border; and the front is decorated with enamel-painted red roses with green leaves over a blue diamond-shaped cartouche outlined in gilt with "Friend / ship" written in gold inside; over an orange tassel flanked by white and yellow floral sprays extending horizontally; and a white floral spray at each side of the handle. Europe has a long tradition of enamel-painted glassware, which continued throughout the 18th well into the 19th century; this decoration was often applied and fired in small workshops independent of the glasshouses (no such shop in colonial American has been identified). Many of these glasses were made for export, and some, such as this example, have inscriptions in the language of the intended export country. This kind of work, especially those with English inscriptions, was originally attributed to Henry Williams Stiegel's glasshouse in Lancaster, Pennsylvannia, but additional research has disproved this attribution. America primarily relied on imported glass in the 17th and 18th centuries, and after the Revolution, German and Bohemian glass factories quickly found a large market here. Glassmakers in Bohemia and the German states used a lightweight, non-lead glass for their products, which was cheaper than similar English and Irish wares, despite higher transportation costs. Many were shipped through Hamburg, and thus were described as German. Ken Wilson, glass scholar, thought in April 1979, that this piece may be English and from the early 19th century.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+69.0582 |
