This type of English drinking glass is uncommon.
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.
Most examples are in fairly clear glass, possibly indicating that they were mainly imports. Most are probably from fire-of-London contexts.
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.
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.
Classification not yet completed.