Green glass fool’s head, ca. 1500–1625
Green glass, blown, applied
(H x W x D)12,6 × 8,4 × 8,3 cm
Place foundMainz
About the workYou can drink from this head; it is a kind of straw. If you suck hard enough on the tube at the back of the head, the wine colours the hollow-blown glass eyes and potentially rises up into the donkey ears of the jester’s cap with its bells on top. The jester’s neck probably merged into a tube that could be inserted into a goblet that had a glass rod or even a thinner tube fused in the middle. There are many surviving novelty glasses of this kind, often in the shape of a stag: users were supposed to drink from its snout. No comparable examples for the jester have been found to date.
AccessionKarl Amendt collection, permanent loan since 1988
Inventory numberLP 2010-166
