This type of English drinking glass is probably the most important group of English-made glasses of the seventeenth century. They are seldom illustrated and few people recognise their importance. They have no recognised name, so we have called them tapering stems. This is because the stems taper in diameter from the top to the base. They represent the first 'English' glass designs; introducing the simplicity of form and reliance on proportion which were to be the hall-mark of English-made drinking glass for the next century. These designs both resulted from, and exploited, the crystal glass newly introduced by George Ravenscroft and others. They form the root for both the classic inverted-baluster stemmed and plain-stem trumpet glasses which dominated the early Georgian era and their influence can be traced into the early nineteenth century.
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.
This is also one of the rare groups where copies of original designs survive (these sketches are from Sloane Manuscripts, 857, in the British Museum) and where glasses can often be dated with considerable precision. This is possible for a number of reasons:
The design sketches for tapering stems in Sloane MS 857 show three sizes - 170, 150, & 125 mm high. On earlier orders similar sizes of glass were labelled as being for beer, French wine and Spanish wine (or sack). From archaeological evidence it seems likely that these glasses may have been used more in inns and taverns than in private houses, but we cannot be sure.
At this time, some glass makers put a seal on some of their glasses, by impressing a crest into a molten blob of glass. They probably copied this from seals on bottles, but here the seal represented the maker and not the owner. The first clear mention of a glass-maker using a seal was in the London Gazette for 5th October 1676. A notice six-months earlier may also refer to using seals. A year later, a raven's head crest was being used by the glass maker George Ravenscroft. All but one of the glasses marked with a raven's head seal are known to be made of lead crystal. There are arguments about whether the other one contains lead and if its seal is really a raven's head. Documents of the time also mention a Royal-arms seal (16th April 1683) and a lion-and-coronet seal (4th December 1684), but none of these have yet been found. A glass dated 17th January 1683/4 is made of lead crystal and is not sealed, so the use of seals was probably dying out about then. It is unlikely that the raven's head seal was used after Ravenscroft's death on 7th June 1683 and may not have been used after his patent for making glass expired on 16th May 1681. We know about quite a few different seals from this time:
All except the boar's head seal have been found on glasses with tapering stems. No lead- crystal examples with the last two seals are known. We also know about one tapering stem which is made from a type of green glass in-use before lead-crystal was invented.
Two complete glasses with tapering stems have hand-painted decoration on their bowls. Both excavated and intact examples also have bowls with panelled-dimple moulding. We think this kind of moulding is Dutch in origin and so dates from after the accession of William and Mary to the English throne in 1689. The little archaeological evidence available supports this, but there is not enough to be sure. For similar reasons, we also think that tapering stems with writhen moulding date from this period.
We stated earlier that examples of this type of glass can often be quite closely dated. The illustrations above from Sloane 857 probably date from about 1673 and there is no evidence that tapering stems were made before this time. In a letter of January 1673/4 Girolamo Alberti, Venetian Secretary in London wrote to the Doge and Senate in Venice that, "They already make crystal glass here to perfection". He may have been referring to glasses with tapering stems.
Early glasses had short straight-sided stems. These and other early features are described below. Later stems became taller and more incurved. When they had straight funnel bowls, they tended towards the shape that would later become the classic inverted-baluster stem. By the early-1690s this inverted-baluster shape had fully developed. On other glasses with inset round-funnel bowls, the elongated stem tended to merge into the base of the bowl. This soon developed into the single-piece bowl and stem of the plain-stem trumpet. The earliest known example of this type is in Dorchester Museum and is dated 1696. Excavated glass from archaeological sites supports this general dating, but is rarely sufficiently closely-dated to provide positive evidence. An exception to this is some glass artifacts excavated from Port Royal in Jamaica, (more details) most of which appear to be of English origin. Port Royal suffered an earthquake on June 7th 1692, when much of the port-city was destroyed. It also suffered a major fire in 1703. At that time it was described as the wickedist city on earth and many thought that these disasters were divine retribution. Tapering stemmed glasses are the most common type of drinking glass artefact that have been recovered from the earthquake-ruined areas. Others were recovered with fire damage and these are the latest excavated examples of the type that can be securely dated. Naturally they may have been several years old when they were destroyed.
Port-Royal has yielded by far the largest number of tapering-stems of any site. However, a significant number of excavated examples have also been found in America and Holland. There are probably two reasons why such a large proportion of English-made glasses has been found in other countries. The first is that these glasses spear-headed a major export sales boom for the English glass industry, particularly due to the technical supremacy of their lead-crystal glass. The second reason is that a major glass-recycling trade developed in England to meet the demand for cullet (broken glass) that was an important ingredient in the glass-making batch. Exported glass was probably not recycled very much, although the 'book of rates', used then by English Customs to assess import duties, includes charges for broken glass.
The following features indicate a glass from the early part of the period:
Glasses from the later part of the period usually display one or more of the following:
Quite frequently tapering-stems have four vertical indentations to give it a quatrefoil-shaped (four-leaved clover) cross-section. Approximately the same number of glasses are known with these markings as without them.
For notes on the 17th Century glass classification used Click here. Unlike the classifications of some earlier stem forms, the basic form of the tapering stem does not include a strengthening merese at either the stem- to-bowl and the stem-to-foot junctions.