Stangenglas

As mentioned in the texts to exhibits Nuppenbecher and Krautstrunk, European medieval glassware was mostly described as relatively primitive in the literature until the mid-20th century and even beyond. This assessment was based on insufficient knowledge of the material. A completely new view was established by the exhibition Phoenix of Sand and Ashes shown in 1988 at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn and the Historisches Museum Basel. The exhibition convincingly demonstrated that, contrary to previous assumptions, medieval glassworks sometimes produced pieces that met the highest standards. Indeed, it would have been astonishing if, alongside the exceptional artistic achievements of skilled artisans during this period in the most diverse fields – not least the magnificent stained glass windows in cathedrals – glass vessels in particular had been the only genre to remain more primitive. The three prunted beakers (Nuppenbecher) and the tall beaker (Stangenglas) shown here bear witness to the high quality of medieval glass vessels made for everyday use.

Among the glasses with prunts, tall glasses (German Stangengläser) are much less likely to have survived intact than the smaller beakers, some of which were able to survive as reliquaries walled into altars. And while prunted beakers were widely produced in Europe in a continuous typological development from the 13th to the 16th century, tall glasses with prunts did not appear until the late 15th century (apart from a particular local type that was in use in Bohemia in the 14th century).

The Stangenglas shown here was acquired for the Historisches Museum Basel as early as 1895, from a previous owner in northern Switzerland. Since archaeological excavations in this region have repeatedly brought to light fragments of similar glasses, it is likely that they were produced in local glassworks, possibly in one of the Jura valleys. Unfortunately, to date there are no excavations at the sites of glass huts from the late medieval and early modern periods on Swiss territory, the finds of which could provide evidence for this assumption.