One might be tempted to believe that a glass candlestick would be more likely to have been brought to 17th-century Virginia than would a seemingly pretentious, covered, "ceremonial" drinking-glass. But in 1732, Thomas Jones[22] of Williamsburg made a settlement upon his wife in case of his death, and among the possessions listed were "6 glass decanters, 6 glasses with covers...."[23] Covered glasses ceased to be popular after about 1720 when fashions in glass were turning from the icy sparkle of mass towards more delicate and lighter designs. It is possible, therefore, that the Jones' glass might have been of the general type indicated by the Clay Bank stem. But be this as it may, there is no doubt that the excavated stem is the finest piece of glass of its period yet discovered in America, and that it is sufficiently important to be able to add a paragraph to the history of English glass.
Other glass objects included the powdered remains of a small quatrefoil-stemmed wineglass, a form common in the period 1680-1700.[24] Like so many glasses of its type, the metal was singularly impermanent when buried in the ground, and little or nothing could be salvaged of it. Also present were fragments of at least seven wine bottles of the short-necked, squat-bodied forms of the late 17th century, as well as one fragment of a short-necked and everted-mouthed case bottle. A few fragments of cylindrical pharmaceutical bottles were also found as was a well-preserved bottle of similar metal but in wine-bottle shape (fig. 9 and fig. 15, no. 19). Such bottles are thought to have been used for oils and essences, and their manufacture seems to have been confined to the period about 1680-1720.
Tobacco-pipe fragments (fig. 16) were plentiful throughout the cellar fill and provided a useful range of bowl forms as well as a key to the dating of the deposit. All the bowls were of types common in the last years of the 17th century, a period in which the two English bowl styles of the second half of the century (one evolving with a spur and the other with a heel) merged together into the single spurred form of the 18th century.[25] In addition, the Clay Bank cellar contained examples of bowls with neither heel nor spur, a style never popular in England, and which seems to have been developed specifically for the American market initially copying the shape favored by the Indians.