ENGLISH FREE-BLOWN STRAIGHT STEM ALE / WINE GLASS, colorless lead glass, the trumpet bowl atop an extraordinarily thick drawn stem with single tear, conical foot with folded rim and rough pontil mark; the bowl is finely engraved with the six-petal Jacobite rose with a single rose bud off to its left and four leaves, the rose's thorny stem adjoining a thistle with two of its own leaves and two thistle flowers, the rear with "Fiat" engraved below the rim and a long oak leaf below, and the foot is engraved with the three-feather Prince of Wales emblem reading "ICH DIEN", also known as the badge of the heir apparent. Glass circa 1740, engraving probably circa 1900-1920. 7 1/8" H, 3 3/8" D foot.
Literature: Form parallels Bickerton - Eighteenth Century English Drinking Glasses, p. 139, figs. 345 and 346, decoration modeled after that seen on a glass on p. 282, fig. 894.
Catalogue Note: The remarkably skilled engraving on this piece indicates it is quite possibly the work of infamous Dublin-based forger, Franz Tieze (1842-1932). An exiled Bohemian glass engraver, he produced fabulous original Irish patriotic designs, but also conspired with various identified (and unidentified) Irish and English glass dealers, and with the Pugh Brothers' flint glass factory in Dublin, to poison the market with various fakes and forgeries around the turn of the 20th century. Related pieces have long resided in museum collections around the world, with reassessment ongoing after a 1994 article appearing in The Burlington Magazine helped to expose the fraud. For a related/properly identified example, see object number 79.2.115 in the collection of the Corning Museum of Glass.

This glass is from a group assembled during the 1930s and 40s by Mrs. Warfield E. Haw, who primarily purchased from English and occasionally American dealers including mainly Arthur Churchill and Cecil Davis of London, among others. Mrs. George E. Haw (Warfield) (1887-1968) was an extremely active collector and member of the preservation community in Richmond. In addition to being a member of the Antiquarian Society and Director of the Association for Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, she was Chairman of the Furnishings Committee at Wilton House Museum from 1948 to 1965. She ushered Wilton House Museum through a period of rapid collection growth, loaning many pieces of her own as well as soliciting donations, gifts, and loans from other members, family, friends, and even strangers. Per her memorial, "[Mrs. Haw's] enthusiasm for her task was so contagious that she was able to interest members and friends, not only in giving treasures to Wilton, but also in bequeathing to it silver, furniture, rugs, and porcelain. She made people feel it was a privilege to do so." Upon Haw's death in 1968, she bequeathed her valuable collection of rare drinking glasses as well as a hanging japanned cabinet in which they were displayed in the Dining Room of Wilton for 50 years before being deaccessioned.

Undamaged.