Topic: Rummer date confirmation please

[bat20]

Hi all,i clicked the ebay buy button on this one with no hesitation confident from information gleaned in Tim Mills book that this was a single ogee bowl example from 1810,i sat back and carried on reading well chuffed with my quick draw buy,only to find later in the chapter Mills warning the reader that this glass was reproduced in the 1930's and can superficially resemble the Georgian examples,it has arrived and i think it is the real deal with broken pontil and all,but lesson learned!!,i hope people think it's the older version as well ,many thanks......it's about 6" ht with a very good quality metal and wear to the foot.

[neil53]

Hi, the Edwardian copies also have rough pontil marks I am afraid.  The only way of telling them apart that I know of is the clarity of the metal (the Edwardian versions are very clear in comparison to the greyish metal of the late Georgian examples) and the wear to the base.

Hope this helps,
Neil

[bat20]

Ahh,i was hoping the the difference was going to be easier to judge than that Neil, lol,it has wear to the foot maybe not as much as some pub rummers i have,the quality of the glass seems very ,very good and i don't know if that's good or bad!I've seen the copies you couldn't mistake for the real thing on the net,but i'll have to search for a real one i guess to compare,thanks for replying really does help the learning process and if anyone has one please put it up for comparison,or one of the good copies.

[neil53]

I had a set of six Edwardian ones not so long ago. I'll dig out the pictures tomorrow and post them.

[neil53]

Hi, here is one of the group of six Edwardian rummers of which I was speaking.

[bat20]

 Thanks Neil,i have to say i'm a tiny bit encouraged by that,in so much as Tim Mills did say the Edwardian copies tended to be petal moulded and at a quick glance before work the engraving looks to have a touch less soul for want of a better word,also the foot looks flatter and thinner,any other comments most welcome.

[Paul S.]

my thoughts for what they're worth are.............

Is the pontil scar right for the early C19?  -  period pieces mostly show a scar that looks more irregular and possibly sharper than this one where they have been snapped off from the pontil rod.         This one appears to lack the signs of a break, or snap, and reminds me a little of the Continental mark, where the scar is very neatly circular and not rough, and is achieved by using a hollow circular pontil rod rather than a solid one -  but of course it may well not be Continental.

grape and vine engraving seems to be very unusual for a period rummer, which was a type of drinking glass used mostly for beer/ale/watered rum  -  I've looked through the books and the only example I can see is the one in Tim Mills book.      So not unheard of, but very rare.
Ward Lloyd ('Investing In Georgian Glass') says of the rummer..... "hop and barley engraving is not unusual; this would seem to indicate that rummers were basically intended for beer drinking".
We're speaking here of drinking rummers of course, but it's possible that grape and vine might well have been a motif seen on the much larger serving rummers which were used for the preparation of punch and wine beverages.

However, it's mostly probably back to Neil's comments about colour and wear  -  there's something about a glass that is c. 200 years old that speaks of age, and probably more so with a rummer - perhaps they pick up more age related wear than other types of drinking glass.

Sorry, no more conclusive than when we started I don't think.  
 

[bat20]

Interesting stuff thanks Paul,i think my natural pessimism has me leaning a touch towards the no camp,but just to add a few extra bits the bowl seems a touch greyer than the brighter glass stem somehow?but maybe the wear plonks it at a later date unless it was a show piece and not used much,here's a few more photo's.

[Paul S.]

unfortunately, your most recent pix are coming across way too blue to help  -  clear glass on the screen is always a difficult area when trying to make comparisons between the greyness of Regency, say, and more modern C20 brighter glass.
Think what I was possibly suggesting was that although the grape and vine apparently seems very scarce on period rummers, in the later C19 and into the C20 it was used more frequently on a lot of glassware.

Your best bet perhaps with this one is to take it along to one of the fairs and have a chat to one of the experts on drinking glasses  -  I'm sure that would settle the matter.

[bat20]

If all the stars align Paul i will definitely go and bore a few of them ,the first picture in the thread is fairly close and thanks again for the input.