Skål, cheers, prost, salute …

We currently offer ample opportunity for you to add to your collection or to acquire some exquisite glasses with which to raise a toast. The 40 or so glasses up for auction are spread over 15 catalogue numbers and are primarily 18th and 19th century.

A chance discovery

According to the Roman scholar and writer Pliny the Elder (first century AD), it was the Phoenicians who discovered how to make glass, quite by accident. The story goes that a group of sailors were cooking over a fire and placed the pot on a piece of soda they had with them in the cargo. The next morning they discovered that the soda and sand had been transformed into a glass-like material. The story is but a myth, though Pliny was right insofar that the main components of glass are soda, lime, quartz and a high temperature.

More than just glass

Of course, a lot has happened since then, and even though the basic components are the same, the shape and decoration have been adapted according to the fashions of the day. The glasses up for auction were mainly produced in Central Europe and England at a time when the flourishing glass production in Europe was a hive of activity.
It didn’t take much to transform the glasses into decorative little works of art for the dinner table, for example by decorating the bowl (the top part of the glass) with gold, engravings or facets.

And the stem also provided plenty of scope for variation, as is evident in the twisting, opal-coloured spirals, decorative patterns formed by trapped air, complex facets cut into the stems or embellishment with so-called buttons and balusters. Finally, the foot could also be varied: It could be folded to resist knocks or be made bell-shaped.

The disease you can’t catch

The composition of materials can go wrong, however, as glass with glass disease shows. We are offering a particularly fine example which clearly shows that the glass has been aggressively attacked by the disease. A process which cannot be reversed, but thankfully works slowly. Nevertheless, it is a glass with particularly fine engravings – and it’s not catching!

Form and function

Compared to modern wine glasses, the bowls of the glasses up for auction are characteristically small. This is because the alcohol percentage was far higher in those days than today, so people drank less. And the fact that we know more about the oxidisation of wine is probably another reason why we drink from far larger glasses today. So the glass has again evolved to meet the wishes and needs of modern-day man.

View the entire collection