Engraved Jacobite glasses.

The use of engraved drinking glasses to express political, religious, or dynastic allegiances became increasingly popular in eighteenth-century Britain. As material culture, such glasses offer an insight into a society transforming itself in terms of its beliefs and outlook, and in terms of conviviality, taste, and behavior. But there can be problems with such evidence, and the glistening allure of beauty can easily lead the unwary astray.

Developments in glass technology in the late seventeenth century, particularly the use of lead glass, offered, for the first time, a medium of unsurpassed clarity. Glass engraving--either with a diamond point or a spinning ...