Prunted beaker, 'Krautstrunk'

Free-blown, with applied tooled parts. Slightly ovoid body with cupped rim and with base with high "kick-up" and rough pontil mark at center; applied drawn-out prunts and crimped ring base.
While intended primarily as drinking vessels, small beakers of this type were sometimes adapted as containers for sacred relics. Seals impressed into the wax used to cap the vessels often provide a means of dating them. Glasses of this type were already an established form around 1400. These beakers were made of Waldglas or forest glass, so called because they were produced in forest glasshouses where there were plentiful supplies of wood fuel for the furnaces. From the beginning, these factories mainly produced utilitarian wares: window glass, bottles, and simple vessels. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the vessels consisted chiefly of certain standard forms, which seem to have been made over large areas. This beaker, with its vertical rows of applied prunts and pincered foot ring, is a variant of the type known as a Krautstrunk or "cabbage stalk."