Lion-mask stem goblet

Stem of a goblet decorated with lion masks. The bowl and most of the foot are missing. The mould blown baluster stem has opposing lion masks linked by festoons with gadrooning above and below. The glass may have been made in Venice or London.

The fragment was found in a brick-lined cellar in Gracechurch Street, London EC3. In 1940, workmen digging outside the south-east corner of All Hallows, Lombard Street broke through a chalk wall 18 feet (5.5m) below ground level into the cellar. As well as over a thousand fragments of glass, the cellar contained pottery and tobacco pipes, mostly dating to the first half of the 17th century, and sealed by what is thought to be debris from the Great Fire of 1666.