I've recently bought a lovely pair of early '30s Walsh decanters with two matching glasses. The decanters are transitional between A5170 (Reynolds fig.304) and A5227 (fig.307), at first sight very similar to A5170 but with two major Clyne Farquharson innovations appearing for the first time:
The two rows of flake cuts around the neck are not offset and interlocking, but line up, producing a row of slightly incurved diamond shapes in between, which look amazing through the glass, andThe stoppers are his new elongated shape, first appearing in the factory pattern books on the similar decanter A5227.
The glasses look like standard 4½" tumblers, until you pick them up. Contemporary Walsh tumblers like A5148 (fig.303) weigh about 5oz 140g. One of these glasses weighs in at a massive 1lb 2¼oz 517g, the other only slightly less, also with significantly reduced capacity, almost like deceptive toastmaster glasses!
So, down to my question, are they tumblers? Or are they something you would expect to be more weighty, like a '30s style of whisky glass? Is today's squat whisky glass a fairly recent innovation?
Bernard C. 8)