Tazza thumbnail 1
Image of Gallery in South Kensington
On display at V&A South Kensington
Glass, Room 131

Tazza

1550-1600 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

This type of shallow dish on a foot is called a tazza. It was often used for serving 'sweetmeats'. These were the different sorts of sugared and spiced fruits, conserves, biscuits and other confectionery that made up the final 'sweet' course of a banquet.This example is made of colourless glass into which the glass maker incorporated opaque white glass 'canes' during the glass blowing process. Glass workers prepared the canes in advance by drawing out a blob of molten glass to form a long thread. This thread would cool very quickly after which the glass worker could break it into short sections.


Object details

Categories
Object type
Materials and techniques
Mould-blown filigree glass (a fili and a retorti)
Brief description
Tazza, blown filigree glass, Italy (Venice) or Netherlands (possibly Antwerp or Middelburg), 1550-1600
Dimensions
  • Width: 15.5cm
Styles
Credit line
Wilfred Buckley Collection
Summary
This type of shallow dish on a foot is called a tazza. It was often used for serving 'sweetmeats'. These were the different sorts of sugared and spiced fruits, conserves, biscuits and other confectionery that made up the final 'sweet' course of a banquet.This example is made of colourless glass into which the glass maker incorporated opaque white glass 'canes' during the glass blowing process. Glass workers prepared the canes in advance by drawing out a blob of molten glass to form a long thread. This thread would cool very quickly after which the glass worker could break it into short sections.
Bibliographic reference
F.-A. Dreier, Glaskunst in Hessen-Kassel, 1969, no. 9: same cane-formation and also mould-blown, in piece from the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kassel, datable 1583-84. In the glashouse in Kassel there were some glasblowers that also worked at Antwerp and Middelburg. Fragments related to this piece found in Middelburg (seen by me in coll B. Blok, Noordwijk). Other examples attributable to Southern Netherlands. The glasshouse in Kassel only worked for a very short time. Can't have been a big production. Cf. Theuerkauf-Liederwald, Coburg catalogue 1994, nr. 197, p. 226
Other number
8401 - Glass gallery number
Collection
Accession number
C.202-1936

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Record createdDecember 13, 1997
Record URL
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