This type of English drinking glass is uncommon, only sixteen examples have been recorded. They bridge the gap between the cigar-shaped and mould-blown stems of the first half of the century and the designs of John Greene that are the subject of group 6. In fact there appears to have been almost a continuum of development, so that there are examples where it is difficult to decide on which side of the line they belong. Fourteen of the sixteen examples come from London and the other two from the south east. Thus it is probable all the group are of London manufacture.
This page talks about this sort of glass and includes a classification of all the variations we know about. If you know of any other variations please let us know, so we can keep the list up-to-date.
These figures shows a reconstruction of 'melon knop' fragments in the Museum of London found on a site in Aldersgate, probably dating from the fire of London in 1666. The reconstruction has been drawn using a shareware programme "microlathe" that is available from many INTERNET shareware sites as lathe_151.zip
At this period glasses were made for two different types of drink - wine and beer. It is often assumed that ale rather than beer would have been drunk at this time, but until the early eighteenth century ale was drunk mainly as a hot drink (tea and coffee were unknown in England until after about 1660). Thus contemporary references (including Samuel Pepys' diary) refer to glasses of beer but cups of ale.
In common with glasses from earlier in the period, virtually all these glasses are made from distinctly tinted glass from the presence of impurities (particularly iron oxide) in the glass melting batch. Tints vary from green to brown to grey. One exception is made from a clear fairly-thick good quality glass. like most of the others this was from a probable fire-of-London context.
Ribbed moulding is the only form of decoration recorded, as listed in the classification.
Glasses of this type are among those found from the site of a glass-sellers shop that was almost certainly burnt in the great fire of London in 1666. As far as we know, they do not feature in any of the 'civil-war' sites and are not found in any of the new types of crystal metal which was introduced in the 1670's.
The only significant feature worth noting is that one of the fragments found has a period repair. Repairs have been noted on stems from all three earlier stem groups, but do not appear to be present on any of the later ones. This one is typical, with a shaped metal cage (lead?) being used to enclose two knops and hold the broken parts of the glass together. The earliest repairs seem to date after about 1635, but there is little evidence available. This one was found on the site of an inn at Bagshot with pottery dating from about 1680. However, that date is not inconsistent with the glass being manufactured in the 1660s, since there are clear indications that glasses were in used in inns for periods up to twenty years. The fact that there was a recognised drinking glass repair process indicates how much they were valued.
For notes on the 17th Century glass classification used Click here. In common with other early seventeenth century glasses, the basic form of this stem includes a strengthening merese at both the stem-to-bowl and the stem-to-foot junctions.