A rare façon de Venise serpent-stemmed winged wine tazza, 17th century

The shallow cup-shaped bowl moulded with twelve radiating ribs, resting on a small merese, the elaborate stem formed from a single twisted rope of clear glass containing spiralling threads in opaque white, the sides trailed with pincered ornament in bright turquoise-blue, above a short plain section and basal knop, over a delicate conical foot, 12.4cm high

Provenance
Walter F Smith Collection, Sotheby's sale, 8 July 1968, lot 916
Krug Collection, Sotheby's sale, 7 July 1981, lot 26
Private British Collection

Literature
Brigitte Klesse, Glassammlung Helfried Krug (1973), pp.114-5, no.492

A very similar tazza with a plain bowl was sold by Christie's on 8 February 1977, lot 199. A winged tazza of similar form with a honeycomb-moulded bowl in the British Museum (inv. no.S.573) is illustrated by Hugh Tait, The Golden Age of Venetian Glass (1979), p.88, no.139. Another is in Corning Museum of Glass (inv. no.79.3.181).