- Standing cup
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Standing cup
- Place of origin:
Venice, Italy (made)
- Date:
1475 - 1525 (made)
- Materials and Techniques:
Colourless glass, the foot and lower part of the bowl are blown in a dip-mould, enamelled and gilt
- Museum number:
4259-1857
- Gallery location:
Medieval and Renaissance, room 64, case SS3
Venetian enamelled and gilt glass was a luxury product exported all over Italy and beyond. The glassmakers of Venice had an excellent and wide spread reputation for high-quality colourless glass and fine workmanship in gilding and enamelling.
Account books and inventories of the time sometimes mention small numbers of 'worked' or 'gilded' glass and often this is stated to have come from Venice or Murano, the Venetian island on which the glass industry was concentrated. The value of such items was often many times as great as that of ordinary beakers and bottles which were used in much greater quantities for daily use at the dinner table.
The more valuable enamelled and gilt glasses were almost certainly used for special occasions only. Their shapes were also more varied, including footed beakers and bowls, cooling vessels, dishes, ewers, basins and salts. The fact that such items were specially mentioned in inventories showed how they were treasured by their owners from the start. They were more likely to be kept in the study or in the bedchamber, in painted wooden chests, rather than in the kitchen where the more ordinary dining utensils were kept.
