A rare baluster mead or champagne glass, early 18th century
The distinctive 'U' shaped bowl moulded with a ring of fourteen evenly spaced basal flutes or gadroons, on a teared stem with a cushion knop above an inverted baluster and basal knop, over a conical folded foot, 14.4cm high
Footnotes:
Provenance
Bonhams Edinburgh, 6 December 2007, lot 1303
With Delomosne and Son, 14 June 2008
Patrick and Mavis Walker Collection

These are popularly known as mead glasses, but mead was rarely drunk in Britain and it is more likely they were inspired by Continental roemers used for Rhenish wine, see Dwight Lanmon, The Golden Age of English Glass (2011), p.93. The more open form of the bowl on this glass makes it rarer than the more usual ovoid examples. Related glasses are illustrated by Delomosne and Son, The Baluster Family (1985), p.55, no.26c and by L M Bickerton, Eighteenth Century English Drinking Glasses (1986), p.59, no.37.