Engraved Victorian One and Half Pint Glass Tankard With Ruby Threading c1885

Description

Heading : Engraved Victorian tankard with hand applied trailing
Period : Victoria c1885
Origin : England
Colour : Clear. cranberry trailing
Bowl : Conical. flared rim with machine applied cranberry threading.Machine engraved with vine leaves. ferns and flopwers. Two pint capacity
Foot : Pedestal Star cut
Glass Type : Lead
Size :  18.5cms. maxwidth 13cm. One and a half pint caopacity to the bottom of the trailing
Condition : Excellent
Restoration : None
Weight:  783g

One of the primary pieces of dating evidence on such tankards is the decoration itself. Is this hand applied trailing or machine applied threading ?

When hand applied the threads (called trails) are not uniformly distributed and are of variable thickness. The threads become progressively thinner towards the stop point.

On machine threaded examples the threads are tightly packed together. evenly spaced and of uniform thickness.

Trailing was a widely used decorative technique in ancient Egypt and remains one of the most common forms of decoration. Nailsea glass was produced by trailing a coloured thread upon a vessel before continuing to blow and mould to the required size.Trailing was also used on the rims of multiple Georgian tankards.

It was not until the mid 1870s that threading machines were invented and their adoption will have been rapid as with most labour and cost saving devices. The same threading machines remained in use up to the second world war.

The decoration on this tankard is machine engraved and acid etched through the engraved layer of resist

During the late 19th century thick star cut bases such as this replaced the applied foot on tankards that first appeared on 16th century silver tankards and English glass examples in the early 18th century.