Goblet (Trichterpokal)

The goblet's decorative trailed glass bands delineate measures for a drinking game. The drinker was supposed to gulp only enough to reach the next horizontal line on the goblet and then pass the glass to the next person, giving the vessel its name: Passglas or "pass glass." If he drank too much, he was required to reach the next mark, and so on.

This goblet combines the elongated proportions of Venetian style glasses with other elements closer to Germanic taste: the vessel's large volume, trailed glass, and raspberry prunts. From the early part of the 1500s, great numbers of Italian glassmakers traveled to Northern Europe and began working there, producing objects that combined Venetian techniques with local innovations. The glasshouse at Hall, established in the 1530s, where this goblet was made, was one of the first glass manufactories in northern Europe to produce façon de Venise products.