Admit it, it’s the question you’ve been asking yourself for yonks. Well now our prussian glassware correspondent Angus Young finally has the fascinating answer.
East Prussia, 1763. A group of men gather for a candle-lit dinner in a grand town house in Konigsberg, a port city on the south-east corner of the Baltic Sea. The house is almost certainly the home of Immanuel Kant. Born in Konigsberg, he’s a tutor at the city’s university and an influential philosopher who would become one of the great intellectuals in the Age of Enlightenment.
As the evening draws to a close, a single tall champagne glass is passed around the guests. It features seven names in diamond engraving and an inscription which reads: “Secrecy in love and sincerity in Friendship. All happy together notwithstanding what happen’d in the World” There’s also a date: “August of 30th 1763”.
The names are of those present, headed by Kant himself. The name below is Antony Schorn, the son of a wealthy wine merchant from the nearby town of Braunsberg. A third name – Joseph P – remains a mystery to this day, not helped by most of the engraved surname having worn away over the centuries. However, the remaining four names – Joseph Green, Robert Motherby, John Chappell and Charles Staniforth – are still perfectly legible. All four were from Hull.
Their presence – both at the dinner and on what is now known as the Kant Glass and held in a private collection – reflects the historic trading links between Hull and the Baltic port. Green was a Baltic merchant who hailed from a Hull shipping family. His brother Philip was one of Hull’s most successful late 18th century shipowners, owning the first vessel to enter the Dock (later Queen’s Dock) in 1778. However unlike Philip who lived in a huge house in George Street (the former Hull YPI building), Joseph eventually settled in Konigsberg where he continued overseeing a merchant business trading in grains, coal and herring as well as manufactured goods as well as acting as an agent for other merchants back in Hull.
As well as business, the attractions of the Baltic port city were obvious. Four times the size of Hull, it was the cosmopolitan and sophisticated capital of East Prussia, boasting a cathedral as well as a new university. Motherby was Green’s junior business partner, having arrived in Konigsberg from Hull as a teenager following in the footsteps of his elder brother who worked in the city as a physician. Their firm Green, Motherby & Co. would eventually manage Kant’s finances which included an investment in the company.
Hull-born Chappell didn’t live in Konigsberg but was a regular visitor, captaining ships operating between the two ports. Typically, West Riding cloth and Derbyshire lead was shipped from Hull while yarn, flax and hemp were common cargo on the return voyage. At the time, between 15 and 20 ships regularly sailed between the two. Staniforth completed the line-up from Hull. Another wealthy merchant, he divided his time between his home city and London and became a brother-in-law to Joseph Green.
The engraved glass and its inscription together with a repair to its slender stem continues to fascinate experts well over two centuries since it was made. It’s believed to have been made in England and specially shipped to Konigsberg for the occasion, with either by Green or Staniforth footing the bill. The average quality of the inscription work suggests to antique glassware expert Simon Wain-Hobson that it might have even been a DIY job, He also suggests topics of conversation that night would have included the recent conclusion of The Seven Years War in Europe. The date on the glass certainly fits this theory.
“Possibly these seven men found themselves at dinner in one of their Konigsberg houses ‘all happy together’ where they exchange horror stories of close shaves, bankruptcy and ruin. No doubt they toasted their lucky escape,” he said. “Maybe a member of the party took one of the glasses and started to inscribe it. Others added their lines and names, with more or less success, depending on blood alcohol levels. Maybe the glass was broken that evening, which for some was a lucky omen – an 18th century custom. As the Kant glass was handed down directly within the Motherby family from 1763 to 2008, Robert Motherby was probably the main culprit.”
The remaining mystery is the phrase ‘Secrecy in Love’. According to Christine Battersby, Emeritus Professor at the University of Warwick, it echoes a similar line in a well-known 17th satirical poem. However, there’s also a possibility it could be a nod to the lasting friendship between Green and Kant. Neither man married and a 2001 biography of the philosopher stated “Green’s effect upon Kant cannot be overestimated”. At this distance, it’s impossible to say they were secret lovers in an age when such relationships were rarely made public but, equally, it’s a scenario that can’t be discounted.