Topic: Round fern engraved glass, for what ?

[keith]

Just 3.5 inches tall, small polished pontil mark with lots of wear, it would be very awkward to drink out of 

[Ekimp]

For leaches

They would put muslin cloth over the top and tie it on with string (to prevent escape). Nice one.

[chopin-liszt]

 
Much better than what was going to be my suggestion, which was for filling it with water and using it to magnify candlelight. The engraving might have affected its effectiveness. 

[Anne]

It's leech not leach, but yes it's a leech jar. If you use the board's Search option for leech you'll find several other topics discussing them.

[Ekimp]

“Must do better” May have been auto correct...but probably not.

[keith]

Many thanks to you all  my first blood sucking leech pot ! 

[Paul S.]

nice piece Keith  -  I've had a few over the years - mind you had it been a 'lace makers lamp', as suggested by Sue, that would have been preferable.

[chopin-liszt]

I vastly prefer it being a leech pot. Far more interesting. It's a lovely thing for a somewhat gruesome purpose and I enjoy a bit of cognitive dissonance.
It also reminds us of the importance of glass in scientific endeavours throughout history. We would not have science without glass. Prisms were required for splitting light, it was needed for making vacuums in the Bell jars to investigate what air is.
Even if the notion of bleeding with leeches was wrong. 

[Paul S.]

I'd prefer the lace makers lamp partly because it would be more valuable, partly because I've never owned one, and partly because it would remind me of the human story of the those who ruined their eyesight often when earning a pittance sewing by such poor light, perhaps late into the evening, and whose only connection with science was to be told they lived during the industrial revolution, and in fact lace makers lamps were often just a long necked globe acting as a magnifying lens, water filled and with cork bung. 
What is possibly the longest unpunctuated fictional sentence in the English language?      Certainly not this one, but it is too long.                              Answer next week.

[chopin-liszt]

I'm well aware of the social side of history and deprivations which underlay and provided the wealthy with their luxuries. Other art forms also depict that - Dickens anybody?
I personally find science and medicine far more interesting, and I like the massive contribution glass has made to those fields and to our present cultures, right from the start.