Footnotes

Provenance: The Walter F. Smith collection, lot 206. Illustrated and discussed by Arthur Churchill, Glass Notes, no. 9, December 1949, p. 6, fig. 4. The ‘Russell’ Amen glass is one of a group of thirty-five recorded glasses with special historical significance. The small trumpet-shaped bowl is finely inscribed with diamond point engraving commemorating the Jacobite cause. The engraved elaborate JR monogram over the figure 8, all beneath a crown denotes King James, the Old Pretender and hero of the Jacobites, who would have become James VIII of Scotland. This is flanked by a verse from the Jacobite anthem, ending with the word ‘Amen’, hence the name of the glasses in this group. These celebrated glasses were probably made in Scotland in about 1750, and would have been used for toasting the deposed King, his son ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ and his younger son Prince Henry. The reverse of the present example is engraved with toasts to Prince Henry and to the continuation of the 'Royal Familie'

In his book, The Jacobites and their Drinking Glasses, Geoffrey B. Seddon has compiled a difinitive classification of the surviving Amen glasses. This glass has been known as the ‘Russell Amen’ as it belonged to the Russell family of Edinburgh from at least the 1880s until 1949. It was subsequently in the famous collection of Walter F. Smith Jr of Trenton, U.S.A.

The Russell Amen glass is by the same hand as the 'Spottiswood' Amen glass sold by Sotheby's in April 1991, setting an auction record for such a glass. Christie's subsequently sold the 'Kerr' Amen glass on 2 November 1998, lot 1, and the 'Ogilvy of Inshewan' Amen glass on 18 May 1999, lot 322, these latter glasses engraved with less confidant calligraphy

The complete verses on this glass read

God Save The King I pray
God Bless The King I pray,
God Save The King;
Send Him Victorious
Happy and Glorious,
Soon to Reign Over Us
God Save the King.

God Bless The Prince of Wales
The true-born Prince of Wales
Sent us by Thee;
Grant us one favour more
The King for to Restore
As Thou has done before
The Familie