
Jim Peake
Head of Department
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Rubinglas became incredibly popular in Southern Germany and frequently engraved with sprays of fruit such as this, either with or without birds perched on top. The quality of the engraving suggests that they are unrelated to the finer examples engraved with fruit by the Nuremburg masters and it is possible that the engravers were located closer to Munich or Freising, which were centres of ruby-glass production. A flask of different form but with similar engraving from the Ernesto Wolf Collection is illustrated by Brigitte Klesse and Hans Mayr, European Glass from 1500-1800 (1987), no.80. Compare also to three engraved beakers illustrated by Dedo von Kerssenbrock-Krosigk, Rubinglas des ausgehenden 17. und des 18. Jahrhunderts (2001), pp.184-5, nos.120, 121 and 123. Four-sided bottles such as this are relatively rare and were sometimes part of travelling or apothecary sets.