Reproduction Green Glass Roemers
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GUEST:
My mother-in-law was Welsh and she came from a family of pawnbrokers and silversmiths and things of that kind. And one day she said to me, "Why don't you go up into my attic?" And "There are lots of bits and pieces there that you might like. Why don't you take them back with you to Canada? Whatever you like." And I went upstairs and true enough, I found many things that I liked very much, but I could only take a few. And I just fell in love with the green.
APPRAISER:
The glasses that you have are called roemers, and they do indeed come from Europe. The first roemers were made over 300 years ago in Germany and they were a very, very popular drinking glass designed to drink wine out of, which at the time was really the drink of the slightly wealthier class. Everyone else drank ale. But they made hundreds of thousands of roemers in the 17th century, when they were first really put into production, and then on into the 18th century, too. Now, the early roemers looked just like this. However, they do tend to be paler in color. This dark green suggests that they're not of the very earliest period. Also the feet of the early ones are made from a single thread of glass coiled around into a stepped foot. These are not. These are made by pressing a single piece of glass to look like that. These little raspberries-- which are called prunts, by the way-- also appear on the early roemers. They were originally put on in the 17th century as a way of protecting the glass from slipping out of your hand. You know, if you're eating wild boar in the Black Forest in 1650, it's a messy affair. These, however, have all been done-- these prunts, the feet, everything else-- in order to look like 17th-century roemers. They were probably made in Holland, I suspect, as recently as this century, but I suspect they were made last century. This one has gone as far as having an unusual early- 17th-century form and a foot which has been folded in on itself to give it a little bit of stability. We call that a folded foot. All very nicely made, beautifully free-blown and beautifully shaped roemers, authentic-looking but, I 'm afraid, not of the 17th century. Roemers like this are decorative and charming and I think you picked something very nice from your mother-in-law's attic. I would see these in an antique shop selling for less than $100 each-- perhaps $40 or $50 apiece, something like that.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
By the way, if they were of the 17th century, they could be worth several thousand dollars each.
GUEST:
Really?
APPRAISER:
Yeah.
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