Wineglasses with fantastic "dragon" stems, sometimes known as serpent glasses, were first made in Venice in the late sixteenth century. They became popular and were widely produced in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Northern Europe by the middle of the seventeenth century. Though difficult to make, serpent glasses were once fairly common. Due to their excessive fragility, however, early examples, such as this one and two others in the Robert Lehman Collection, are relatively rare.
