Wine glass

Object Type
English wine glasses of the 18th century vary considerably, not just in form but also in capacity. The tiny bowls on these examples suggest that they were used for strong sweet dessert wine, or even perhaps for the cordials that were sometimes drunk at ladies' tea parties.

Design & Designing
The technique of English lead glass was perfected in the late 17th century. The material was successfully applied first to drinking glasses with heavy baluster stems, then to the drawn-trumpet glasses where the stem formed part of the bowl, and finally to the air-twist or 'wormed' stemmed glass of the 1730s. During the 1750s a huge variety of intricately twisted white enamel stems were substituted for the air-twist, although air-twist was cheaper and still continued to be produced. These stems with their lacelike white enamel inclusions should have been very expensive to produce, but they were not individually made. Their manufacture necessarily involved long lengths of stem being simultaneously twisted and pulled across the glasshouse floor. Individual stems were then simply cut off to suit the height of the drinking glasses. The fashion for enamel stems had almost disappeared by about 1780.