Rummer

Usage

Punch, negus, toddy and grog served warm, and any historical drink you want to serve in period. Around 200 to 300ml. Also perfectly good for wine, and rather better for it than most eighteenth-century glassware.

The Name

Not rum. The word comes from the Dutch roemer, a large drinking glass, itself probably from roemen, to boast or praise: a glass for toasting.

Roemers were made in the Rhineland and the Low Countries from the fifteenth century onward, typically in green glass with a hollow stem decorated with applied blobs called prunts. English glasshouses adapted the form in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries into something plainer and clearer, and called it a rummer.

The confusion with rum is understandable and entirely modern. By the time rum was widely drunk in Britain the glass had been named for two hundred years.

The Shape

A generous ovoid or bucket bowl on a short, often knopped stem, over a heavy circular foot. Capacity is usually 200 to 300ml, which was large for the period.

The short stem is the distinguishing feature and the practical one. Eighteenth-century wine glasses were tall and delicate; a rummer sat low and heavy, which suited a drink taken at a table over a long evening and made it far harder to knock over.

The heavy foot serves the same purpose. These were made for punch and toddy in company, not for formal dining, and the whole design is about stability rather than elegance.

What Went In One

Punch, principally, and its warm relations: negus, which is fortified wine with hot water, sugar, lemon and nutmeg, and toddy, which is spirit with the same.

Grog and shrub turn up too. These are the drinks of the British eighteenth century, taken warm, sweetened and spiced, in a period when punch was the dominant form of mixed drink and the cocktail did not yet exist.

Used today, that is what it suits: hot punches, toddies, negus at Christmas. It also holds wine perfectly well, which is worth knowing if you inherit one and wonder what it is for.

Antiques and Safety

Georgian rummers are common enough to be affordable, and most are safe to drink from. English lead crystal of the period is stable, and the lead does not migrate into a drink over the timescale of an evening. Long-term storage of acidic liquid in leaded glass is a different matter, and no one should be doing that anyway.

The real risks are physical. Old glass is thin, uneven and full of stress from hand-blowing, so it is genuinely vulnerable to thermal shock. Hot punch into a cold antique rummer is how they break.

Check the rim under a light before using one. And if you want to serve toddy in period without holding your breath, buy a reproduction.

What to Look For

• Honest thick walls, no cracks disguised as character
• A stable foot
• Rim chips: run a finger round it
• 200ml-plus capacity for punch duty

Professional Tips

• Antique glass is thin and cold-sensitive. No boiling liquid.
• Hand-wash only, and never soak a glass with a hollow stem.
• Check the rim for chips before drinking from one.
• Buy a reproduction if you actually want to use it.

Specifications