Drinking Glasses

One of the first personalised wine glasses to be made was the cornucopia, it was horn shaped, and were also used as titles to property, a legal document in the past to show you were land owners. The cornucopia was one of the first glasses to be blown, it mimicked the animal drinking horn. It was not until the development of the blowing iron that the stem and foot was put on drinking glasses.

Gaius Plinius Seconds, also known as know as Pliny the elder (23-79 A.D.) wrote about the gold and silver drinking vessels being replaced by the exciting new drinking glasses. 

He wrote that glass was as expensive as the gold or silver drinking vessels. It is thought they used rough diamond to create personalised glasses for the extremely wealthy.

The oldest samples of engraved English wine glasses were diamond engraved and date back to the end of the sixteenth century, then in 1740 air-twist stems came into fashion. They were originally developed to make glass lighter as glass was taxed. This did not work although they were so beautiful that they became very sought after, soon everyone wanted personalised glasses. 

The air-twist stem is made by gathering a glob of glass and making phillips head screwdriver indentations on the end, and thus creating air and pulling and twisting making a stem.

Often people personalised their glasses to avoid poisoning, in Georgian times the cornucopia returned, it was a glass that you could not put down, so you were not at risk of someone slipping something nasty in your drink. 

Engraving was often done to create personalised wine glasses so you knew it was yours.

Later on, Lords had the family crests engraved on their glassware to personalise show they were landed gentry.

All of our wine glass are hand blown in our studio where we have several glass blowers working daily. We use ancient techniques which were used by the Romans, which fits in with the Roman city of Bath.

We blow several ranges of wine glasses and we have matching decanters. We have a Roman range which we colour with copper and iron oxide which gives us the beautiful Bath Aqua colour synonymous with the city of Bath.

Today we use personalised glasses to celebrate wedding anniversaries, to be used as trophies and to convey special messages. We can engrave most of our products, all we require is you to write down your message to avoid mistakes.