As for Peter's glass, well what can we say other than :mrgreen:, and what a daft question to ask whether he will drink from it - of course he will.
The stem I would describe as MSAT - multiple spiral air twist, and I might suggest the bowl is a wrythen trumpet pattern, and the knop is an inverted baluster shape. Below the bowl is what appears to be a conjoined merese and collar. The foot looks conical and I think Peter is saying it is without a fold, but I'm not entirely sure.
So far so good - there are acres of examples with air twists on wines, cordials and engraved ales - BUT Nowhere in Bickerton can I find a single glass with this complete combination of characteristics.
There are pieces from the very beginning of the C18 with wrythen decorated bowls - some with and some without flammiform fringes - but these appear to always be on short knopped stems and certainly without any air twist decoration, and nothing like the example here with the tall air twist stem. These are called short ales or just ales, and are always under 6" in height.
The same sort of bowl decoration appears to have continued well into the mid C18, but it seems they became more miserly, and these later examples are on what are described as rudimentary stems, and again are described as ales.
There are a couple of examples of air twist in Crompton which begin to get a little nearer to Peter's glass, but they don't go all the way, and are in fact described as wines.
Nothing of comparable design in Elville that I can see, and drawn a blank in Ward Lloyd (have you yet spoken to Ward Lloyd, Peter??)
So, it would appear that this combination of the height, air twist and wrythen decoration, is suggesting to Peter that he has something of a rarity, and may well make the process of dating this example more difficult. Of course I could be just getting carried away with imagination, but it does seem that this is a special piece, and please forgive the fact that despite seeming intelligent on C18 drinking glasses, I'm really very thick, and have just been indulging a bit of sneaky plagiarism, and filching from the aforesaid books
