Order a martini? The bartender should chill your cocktail glass with ice and water. Get a cold beer in the summer? Your server might take that glass mug out of the fridge. Cooling glassware to keep your beverage cold and keep the point of contact with your lips chilled is commonplace and very refreshing. Chilled drinks have been around since ancient times when Greeks used snow to cool their wine. Our cold tooth has been with us ever since, but we have satisfied it with different techniques over time. During the late 1600’s, you may have refreshed your glasses with a monteith.
In the late 17th century, distilled spirits were a low-class scourge rather than a refined tipple. Beer was also more commonplace and was still largely considered part of a diet instead of leisure drink. Wine, then, was reserved for the finer echelons of society. Because of the status associated with wine, the accoutrements of wine drinking were equally refined.
The late 17th century and early 18th century saw an interior decorating trend in silverwares known as the Queen Anne period. The fashion of the day was to eliminate ornamentation on house wares that previously were embellished to impress. These functional decorations still had lines and designs on them, but focused on purpose. The monteith came into style in this period and abided by these design fundamentals. It was then just a question of the objects purpose.
The monteith was a multifunctional piece that accompanied wine drinking. It was typically silver but could also be made of glass, pewter, and porcelain. Its distinguishing purpose was to cool wine glasses which were rested in its bowl and held firm by their feet at its scalloped rim. They would hang upside and chill in the cool water of the basin. Frequently, the rim could be removed and the silver basin became a punch bowl. The basin could also be used as a rinse for communal wine glasses or personal glasses in between wines. Strangely enough, they were also used for baptism. They were typically displayed off of the table where servants could access them without being in the way.
The name Monteith is said to have come from a Scotsman who had the habit of wearing a cloak that was scalloped at the edge. The scalloped edge of his jacket was then the rim from which the feet of wine glasses would hang. The term was first used in 1683 by Anthony Wood. The antiquarian wrote, “This yeare [sic] in the summer time came up a vessel or bason notched at the brims to let drinking glasses hang there by the foot so that the body or drinking place might stand in the water to cool them.” The monteith rings as a novelty today, and it is comforting to know it did in 1683 as well.
While the trend came from Europe, and morphed in France where the verrières were smaller, table-ready monteiths, American colonists caught on as well. Along with their imported wines, wealthy colonists ordered handmade monteiths from the continent. Many of the founding fathers had luxurious monteiths that are still extant in museum collections today.
The Mason family of the famous George Mason had a notable monteith that served a non-alcoholic purpose. Rather than chilling wine glasses, this bowl was a family heirloom used for baptisms. The founding father wrote in his will of the monteith, “in which all my children have been christened, and which I desire remain in the family unaltered for that purpose.” Many other prominent families performed baptisms at home in their monteiths. After all, this was an easy way to show status and wealth. There are also reports that these same silver bowls were used for baptisms in Ireland.
The monteith did not stay in fashion long. It hung upon the status of wine just as glasses hung from its scalloped rim. Other tableware would serve similar purposes such as generic punch bowls and rinses which sat at each seat and could be used to rinse glasses between wines. There are still many exquisite examples of monteiths in museums and private collections today. We can rest assured that no one is cooling their champagne flutes in a monteith today, never mind dipping their newborn’s head in one, but it is refreshing to remember the curious history of the once important wine glass cooler.
TITLE IMAGE: ROBERT PEAKE ENGLISH, FREE 1680. Image courtesy Clark Art Institute. clarkart.edu. https://www.clarkart.edu/artpiece/detail/Monteith-(1)
B, Giorgio. MONTEITH, http://www.silvercollection.it/dictionarymonteith.html.
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Edward Morris Davis III. “Historical Silver in Commonwealth of Virginia.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 49, no. 2, Virginia Historical Society, 1941, pp. 105–24, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4245080.
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Naylor, Henry. “Eighteenth Century Dublin Silver.” Dublin Historical Record, vol. 12, no. 1, Old Dublin Society, 1951, pp. 14–19, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30080720.
Thomas, Catherine S. Class by the Glass: The Significance of Imported Wine Consumption in America, 1750–1800, University of Maryland, College Park, Ann Arbor, 2007. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/class-glass-significance-imported-wine/docview/304852614/se-2?accountid=11752.
Winner, Lauren F. “The Mason Monteith.” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, vol. 2 no. 2, 2009, p. 161-169. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/hcy.0.0056.
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