When the Ghost of Christmas Present whisks Scrooge to the Cratchit household, we are told ‘…at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.’ That Dickens found, of all the possessions they might have had, the Cratchits’ status, indeed the whole nature of their domestic environment, was best summed up in three pieces of table-glass tells us of the significance of this most anonymous of products to the domestic sphere.
Table-glass proliferated in the industrially developed economies of the 19th century, responding to dining ‘a la Russe’ and bourgeois tastes for display. The Cratchit household’s holdings in the 1840s would look mean then, but they would seem far moreso a generation later. The inherent fragility of glass, its capacity for reflection and sparkle and use for alcoholic beverages gives it a special status in the realm of table-wares; yet, it largely remains anonymous. It is rare to find any indication of maker and determining a period or region of origin is usually more a matter of connoisseurship than documented fact.
This paper considers the place that table-glass had in the domestic space in the 19th and into the 20th century. How it was used to define status both as a visual statement and in terms of practicality bounded by codes of use. The paper will particularly focus on the nature of the objects, the thing that in the museum are difficult to express, yet essential to understanding, its feel to the hand and lip. The Cratchits’ handle-less custard cup was still likely to be the most handleable of their display when it came to use, particularly if filled with ‘hot stuff from a jug’.