Title   Coopies geen glas, ik denck wel neen (Search for the image)
Translated title Will You Buy Glass? I Think You Will Not
Intro Text by dr D. Barnes, accompanying Bramer’s drawing of a glassware peddler (`glas venter’)

Code of occupational group 45220
Description A young glassware peddler shouts his wares in the market square. He is wearing shoes, leggings or hose tied just below the knee, short pants, a jacket with many buttons extending from his neck to his stomach, and a broad-brimmed hat. His mouth is open, head turned to the side, and his eyes seem to be noticing a potential (but unseen) customer. His right arm is lifted to display a large stemmed goblet (or roemer). A wicker display case is resting against his left hip. The case is strapped across his chest and right shoulder. In the case are glasses, bottles, and flasks. Behind the peddler in the right background, some people are sitting on benches at an outside table probably belonging to a tavern.

Glassware was not only used for drinking glasses in taverns and private homes, but also for serving and storing beverages and cooking oils. Recipes for cooks frequently required the addition of a roemer of wine to a warmed sauce: so although roemer sizes might vary, they were used as measures in the kitchen. Glassware was produced in large quantities by glassblowers, working in industrialized glass houses, but sold by shopkeepers or by itinerant peddlers. Some glassware sold in the Netherlands was produced in Holland; other commonly available drinking glasses were imported cheaply from German producers. Delicate glassware, often using colored glass for additional decorative effect, was produced in Venice, and was also available to wealthy Dutch consumers. Expensive Venetian glassware, however, would not be hawked on the street.

The glassware peddler is seen in the 1646 etchings based on Carracci; and appeared much earlier among the 18 woodcuts for the "Cries of Paris," ca. 1500. Dutch artists lavished attention on capturing the shape, glint, texture, and color of glassware in genre paintings and in still life studies. Prunted berkemeier wine glasses, a tall facon de Venise winged flute glass, and a waffle beaker of beer can be seen in Gerret Willemsz. Heda's Still Life with Ham (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)

Source Donna R. Barnes, Ed D, Street scenes, Leonard Bramer's drawings of seventeenth-century daily life (Hofstra Museum exhibition 1991). Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York.

Click here for the introductory essay on Bramer's drawings.



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