Goblet (Kelchpokal)

Although the Venetians tried to protect their monopoly of colorless cristallo glass, issuing orders and threatening terrible punishments to workers who emigrated to the north, its manufacture spread to many parts of Europe in the 1500s. In 1534, in Hall, Austria, Emperor Ferdinand I opened one of the earliest glasshouses to produce Venetian-style glass in Northern Europe. Wolfgang Vitl ran the workshop, employing both Venetian glassblowers and local craftsmen.

Vitl and his successor Sebastian Höchstetter produced vessels that are Italianate in shape but larger and sturdier than genuine Venetian products. Venetian vessels from half a century earlier influenced this goblet's form, but its pattern-molded knop is typical of mid-sixteenth-century glass from Hall.