Description:
Colorless blown non-lead glass tumbler with flat polished base, pontil mark has been removed, narrow vertical facets cut along the entire exterior of the glass; gilt decoration in the form of a border of beads or fish roe punctuated with starbursts ornament the top of the glass; the rest of the glass has stars and a lower band of bellflowers?; the glass has a few air bubbles and inclusions; this tumbler was owned by Mary "Mollie" Wells (1896-1975) of Deerfield (PVMA curator) and purchased by J. Peter Spang in the late 1960s at a tag sale given to benefit the First Church of Deerfield. Mary was the daughter of Lincoln B. Wells (1861-1943) and Abbie M. Wells (1865-1941) who owned the Wells homestead in the Wapping section of Deerfield. Much of this style of glass had been attributed to Henry William Stiegel's glassworks; however, 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. Tumblers and beakers begin to appear in Connecticut Valley estate inventories after the Revolution (usually two or more listed), many decorated with crudely engraved floral designs. These items were imported from New York and Boston by Connecticut Valley merchants beginning about 1770. Frederick Rhinelander (1743-1805), a New York ceramics and glass merchant, supplied Valley merchants with similar tumblers during the 1770s, and the Deerfield firm of Williams and Upham bought tumblers and wine glasses from Burling and Haviland of New York City in 1783. Similarly decorated tumblers also appear in two illustrated glass catalogues dating around 1800 (now in the Winterthur Museum library), which were discovered on Gardiner's Island, New York, where they have a long history of ownership; the catalogues have 217 ink-and-wash illustrations of glass objects and chandeliers captioned in German. The catalogues were probably given to an American merchant by a German glass manufacturer or glasshouse agent; the name "Johannes Schiefner," a resident of Parchen, Bohemia, is inscribed on one of the accompanying price lists. Schiefner has been linked to an international export and commission business in 1805; one of his employees, Franz Anton Zahn, sold glass on commission for him from 1791-1793. This tumbler looks very similar to #155 in the Gardiner's Island trade catalogue.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2002.31.2 |
