This particularly extravagant exhibition goblet in Renaissance style is a masterpiece by the Bohemia glass engraver Franz Paul Zach (1819–1881). It is made in two pieces, both of colourless, clear glass, with a thin, blue glass overlay. The bowl is attached to the stem with a cut glass screw thread.
Zach has engraved through the blue overlay on the bowl, to reveal a lively, flowing mythological scene. We see Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, riding a goat, and wife Ariadne, a Cretan princess, riding a panther. Bacchus’s followers, including a goat-hooved satyr, are carrying a type of staff topped with a pine cone which is called a thyrsus, a symbol of fertility.

Despite a number of recorded works signed "F. Zach" or "F.P. Zach", relatively little is known about the engraver Franz Paul Zach who apparently specialised in such rampant bacchanalian scenes in the manner of the glass engraver Georg Schwanhardt the Elder (1601-67).
Zach was born in Prague and trained there. He moved to Munich in 1843 where he shared a house with Franz Steigerwald, the retailer of this goblet which was purchased by the Museum following its display in the International Exhibition, Paris, 1855. Franz Steigerwald sold glass made by his brother Wilhelm through his glass shops in Munich and other cities. Wilhelm owned two other glassworks, one at Theresienthal (founded 1834, sold 1861) and the other, the Regenhütte, also at Zwiesel (founded 1844-45).