Topic: German? Unusual souvenir Römer.

[flying free]

I was thinking yours might have come from Neuwelt (Harrach'sche )

This has some similarities with yours in terms of shape of bowl (also a roemer but different neck to yours) and the cutting band around the middle:

https://nat.museum-digital.de/index.php?t=objekt&oges=219322

So Neuwelt may be worth investigating further as well.

[Ekimp]

Thanks, that does look more like it. The foot looks more similar than the Theresienthal ones too I think. The rings on the trumpet part look well formed and quite well defined on the Theresienthal glasses, less so well on my glass and the one in your link.

[Ekimp]

I have come across this very similar glass here:

https://glaswolf.de/ansichtenglaeser/r/1035/ansichten-roemer-ruedesheim-mitte-19.jh.?c=6

Dated to mid 19th century but with no suggested maker. The bowl looks the same as mine, including the same hobnail cutting, but with a different engraved scene.

The scene depicted is titled ‘Rüdesheim’, seeing as there is a boat shown on a large mass of water I assume this is Rüdesheim am Rhein. That is just five miles down the road from Schloss Johannisberg that is shown on my glasses

The neck is more similar to the one in flying free’s link above, having two neck rings/collars, although they have been cut. The foot doesn’t flare as much as mine...

[flying free]

I would say from the same  as yours.  They are handmade and cut  and so they are mostly slightly different but I'd say they are from the same source.  Souvenir glasses. 

Mid 19th is earlier than I'd have thought but he knows his stuff

m

[Ekimp]

Thanks. Yes, have to be the same maker I should think. Maybe both places were caught by the same sales person I had assumed you would buy the souvenir when visiting the place depicted but perhaps there was a tourist shop in the region where you could buy whatever you fancied - like buying a postcard of Stonehenge in London.

[Lustrousstone]

They would have been bought in the name placed. The souvenir trade was quite big, even then. The seller's would have placed their orders with a salesman

[flying free]

I find when looking up these glasses, that the history of the period often give interesting info on tourism to the area:

This from wiki:
'On 1 January 1818, Rüdesheim received town rights. After Prussia annexed the Duchy of Nassau in 1867 and divided the area into districts (Kreise), Rüdesheim became a district seat in the newly founded Rheingaukreis. It held this status 110 years until 1977, when in the course of municipal reform in Hesse the districts of the Rheingaukreis and the Untertaunuskreis were merged into the new Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis, and Rüdesheim had to yield the district seat to Bad Schwalbach.

In 1877, the first foundation stone was laid for the Niederwalddenkmal, a patriotic monument above the vineyards which would be finished in 1883. It attracted many tourists who could reach it on a cog railway. Today, a gondola lift brings visitors up to the monument. Tourism has more and more replaced shipping as a source of income.'

And on yours - enough for it to have been a prime tourist spot :
from wiki:

'In 1716, Konstantin von Buttlar, Prince-Abbot of Fulda, bought the estate from Lothar Franz von Schönborn, started construction of the baroque palace, and, in 1720, planted Riesling vines, making it the oldest Riesling vineyard in the world.[1] The estate changed hands several times during the Napoleonic Wars, but in 1816 Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, gave it to the great Austrian statesman Prince von Metternich.'

what it looked like from an engraving around 1832:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schloss_Johannisberg#/media/File:Tombleson_Johannisberg.jpg

[Ekimp]

That’s interesting, thanks. I did do a bit of investigation into the history of Mumm’s house shown on my glass, mainly from the current owner’s website I think. I forget now but didn’t find anything to tie down a date...except Mumm was first associated with the place c.1811 - so it post dated that! I understand it was common for engravers to copy lithographs and I believe the design on my glass was probably copied from the print by J. A. Lasinsky that Monika found (reply 1). That print was dated 1828.

It’s useful what you say about the Niederwalddenkmal monument finished in 1883 as it doesn’t look to be shown in the engraving on the Rüdesheim glass - is that what you were getting at? There is a postcard (posted in 1925) of a similar view here: https://www.akpool.de/ansichtskarten/27128191-kuenstler-ansichtskarte-postkarte-ruedesheim-am-rhein-panorama-vom-ort-mit-eisenbahnbruecke-dampfschiff# The engraving on the glass looks like the left hand two thirds of the postcard, up to the church. You can see the Niederwalddenkmal monument prominent on the horizon of the postcard but not on the glass. I think there is some artistic license in the postcard but you would imagine the monument would be shown in the glass engraving if it had been finished. So purely based on the engravings, the glasses can possibly be shown to date between 1828 and 1883, mid century is about the average

They would have been bought in the name placed. The souvenir trade was quite big, even then. The seller's would have placed their orders with a salesman

I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that glasses from the same manufacturer in the same style show landmarks that are geographically just five miles apart. Maybe they were sold to the individual management by the same person but I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a souvenir shop in the town of a tourist hotspot, selling all the local ticky tacky in one place. The Rüdesheim souvenir glass is for a town, not a single establishment, so who would have sold that

[flying free]

The glasses might have been sold as blanks but then engraved by someone who was local to the area, who may have bought them from the glass seller.
In the books iirc there are examples of blanks being ordered from Neuwelt and specification of what they were to look like.

I suppose it is possible they were mass produced somewhere like Neuwelt or Josephinenhutte for example pre-engraved with a variety of tourist hotspots but it's also likely they were sold as blanks and then engraved more locally by local engravers/refiners (dependent on area and whether there would have been a glasscutter locally I guess).

There is a fascinating book online through Gutenberg which I've linked somewhere on another thread, that is very descriptive of the glass industry/cottage refining industry in Bohemia mid 19th.  Report written by someone who was visiting on a glass recce of the industry at the time.  It's an amazing read.
Report starts on page 291 here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36564/36564-h/36564-h.htm#GLASS_OF_BOHEMIA



Yes, that's the kind of info that it's interesting to come across because it can help to date the piece dependent on what is included on the engraving, although it is also possible some were copied from existing painting/engravings etc.

[Ekimp]

Thanks for the link, the industry isn’t quite how I imagined it! I think I’ve come across that piece on one of your other threads, I remember reading the bit where the author was given a demonstration of the engravers skill and he was given the choice of subject - he choose a stag. Not that there’s anything wrong with stags but they must be one of the most commonly depicted animals and I would’ve gone for something else.

Maybe the local hotel sold sets of glasses, I’ll have to keep my eye out for any others