Gilded glass goblet

Venice or Antwerp (façon de Venise), About AD 1550-75

This delicate glass is very thinly-blown and decorated only with gold-leaf gilding. The overlaps between sheets of gold leaf can be clearly seen. Wine in the glass would have been seen through the thin layer of gold. The proportions of the glass, the knops on the stem and the small foot are perfectly adapted for its function as a wine glass: these are the features which also help us to date it.

H. Tait (ed.), Five thousand years of glass-1, 2nd paperback edition (London, The British Museum Press, 1999)

D.B. Harden and others, The British Museum: masterpiec (London, 1968)

H. Tait, The golden age of Venetian gla, exh. cat. (London, The British Museum Press, 1979)