Heavy Baluster Wine Glass
Georgian Heavy Baluster Wine Glasses 1685 to 1710
The Venetian influence by 1700 was beginning to loose popularity due to George Ravenscroft invention of flint glass at his glass works at Henley-on-Thames.
This new type of glass gave way to a style of glass known as the Heavy Baluster wine glass being produced from 1685 to 1710. These early glasses made from heavy flint were named as they resembled stair rail supports of the period and were also incorporated into furniture legs and candlesticks of the time thus keeping in fashion at the time.
The glass would be made in three separate pieces comprising of the bowl, stem and the foot. The stem had some fabulous shapes and this part of the wine glass would change the most through the decades to come and can determine when the glass was produced. Early bowls tended to be conical or funnel shaped with a heavy base whilst the foot was conical or dome-shaped with a folded foot to give extra protection to the foot itself.
The craftsman of the time produced the most ingenious stem formations such as the inverted baluster, acorn, ball, cylinder, mushroom and annular rings with many other varied formations.