As with B.86.14, the attribution of this cut tumbler with a sulfide likeness of George Washington inset into its bottom is secure. It is documented to Pittsburgh and the Bakewell factory by two contemporary references. One, in an 1825 issue of a Baltimore newspaper, is a description of a display of cut glass tumblers with likenesses of notable Americans made by Bakewell, Page, and Bakewell; the other is an 1825 Philadelphia auction notice for cut glass tumblers with medallion likenesses of Washington and others. Neoclassical white clay medallions imbedded into glass, today commonly called sulfides, came into fashion in Europe in the early nineteenth century and in America were first made in Pittsburgh. As these sulfide ornamented tumblers can be documented as being on public display and offered at auction, it is less likely that they were intended to be presentation pieces.

Related examples: Winterthur (Palmer 1993, p. no, no. 65); DAR Museum, Washington, D.C., with a history of ownership by revolutionary era Delaware hero, Caesar Rodney (acc. no. 1916): (Innes 1976, p. 132, figs. 85, 86); MMA (Davidson 1980, p. 46), with a sulfide portrait of Lafayette.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.