c. 1660-1685

Goblet (called "Serpent Glass")

In the sixteenth century, Venetian glass was the most admired, and most technically advanced, glass in Europe. Despite attempts by the Venetian government to conceal its glassmaking methods, the techniques were smuggled out by workers who left Venice to work in northern Europe. Glasses like this one--made in the late seventeenth century in the Venetian style, but not in a Venetian glasshouse--are known as façon de Venise.