ANTIQUE GLASSWARE AND CHOCOLATE COMESTIBLES – A FINE PARTNERSHIP – by Colin Sutherland



There is a great deal of speculation available on-line as to the derivation of the name of The Kit Cat club – a society of Gentlemen, Whigs, and Protestant Hanoverian Loyalists who were front and centre amongst London’s social elite during the early 1700’s. It is not our place to cogitate upon such musings here, but rather to note the role that the club played in lending its name to a particular style of wine glass, which is still used by collectors to this day.

 

The club was an archetypal Georgian assemblage of sundry noblemen – rakes, bon viveurs, bibbers and tipplers for whom faux-politicking, self-conferred import and faineance passed as pretty much full-time jobs. A matter regarded with the utmost seriousness by these urbane fellows was, however, a peculiar kind of collective, ritualised flirting. This involved the proposal of various eligible young ladies of the day as being deserving of the membership’s formal endorsement, with the one garnering the most support at a particular meeting being formally toasted by all those in attendance. It then fell to a gentleman by the name of Sir Samuel Garth to compose a rhyming couplet or few lines of verse about the toastee, which were engraved – along with the name of the lady in question – on to a wine glass, which was then retained by way of a record as to who has been thusly honoured.

 

These glasses were purported to take a very particular form, as illustrated by our example – of balustroid nature, with a drawn trumpet bowl over a tapered, plain stem with a prominent basal knop and a conical foot; the inclusion of tears is not uncommon, and the knops vary widely. It is likely, though, that this is little more than the application of common knowledge by those who depicted the Kit Cat club and its members, as this general form of glass was widely used at the time; the association has, however, become firmly lodged in the public consciousness to the point where the majority of similar glasses are now universally known as being ‘in the Kit Cat style”.