Featured Glass egg cup? with attached saucer

I'm hoping someone will have seen one of these before, because I have been searching for months and can't find anything quite like it. It looks like a wine glass but of course the attached saucer suggests egg cup. The cup is actually a bit too big for a hen's egg, the "large" one I tried slipped down inside, but I'm guessing a bit small for a duck's egg. The nearest I can find are glass bowls with attached saucers for soft desserts, but they are much wider at the rim. The etched decoration is quite fine and rather posh for an egg cup. The saucer is shiny on the upper surface but has a frosted appearance on the base, and it has an indented mark in the base as if from a smoothed pontil, rather at odds with the frosting. Any thoughts welcome!

 

maybe a cigarette holder

some examples:
https://www.worthpoint.com/inventory/search?query=cut+cigarette+holder&category=glass

 

I had never heard of a glass cigarette holder, but there are several in that link with etched glasses and saucer bases a bit like this. Do you think the saucer was an ash tray? I would never have dreamt this was to do with smoking! And all those months searching for glass egg cups, to no avail . . .

 

@ValerieK GOOD question, 'cuz I have a couple of very PLAIN ones VERY similar to yours that came from my husband's Aunt's early B&B that we always thought they were either juice or egg cups!! So, I too await someone's answer!!!!

 

I think the saucer would hold matches. And might have had a matching ashtray.

Debora

 

I believe Cambridge Glass marketed them as cigarette holder with ashtray foot.

 

I've managed to find a Cambridge glass cigarette holder for sale online, looking deceptively like a ruby wine glass with turned up base. Not much like mine but they could have made others, of course. Or other makers could have had the same idea. Maybe there are lots still around but people mistake them for egg cups or wine glasses with odd bases!

 

If there were matches in the saucer they would have had to be struck on something, and I think this was from the era of fancy table lighters, so I think that an ashtray looks more likely. Once there were cigarette stubs in the base it would look a lot less elegant! Extra ashtrays would probably also be necessary anyway. I will have to watch old black and white films and look out for one in use.

 

If yours are also cigarette holders they are probably more valuable than egg cups too! If they are too big and deep for eggs, like mine, that would be a clue. Odd that they were from a B&B, which would mean they would have been put on a breakfast table, horrible to think of people smoking then, encouraged by the management. Or maybe they were in a lounge. Mine is so pretty I can imagine it being put on an elegant dinner table along with the shiny cutlery and wine glasses, looking part of the table setting. Then the air filled with tobacco smoke as the meal went on, and the base filled up with stubs. I'm so glad those days are gone!

 

Matches in a book. Perhaps with the hostess initials.

Debora

 

I didn't mean to imply that yours was made by Cambridge. (I don't think it is).
I only meant to support the idea that the base was an ashtray as that is how Cambridge marketed theirs.

 

A late reply - yes, I think that although they were sold as cigarette holders with attached ashtray, putting matchbooks in the base would have been a much better use, with separate ashtrays on the table. Matchbooks, that takes me back to a time when they were everywhere, and were often a clue in crime dramas, when the victim would have a matchbook in their pocket or handbag and the detective would say, "I see they visited the . . . bar and look, there's a phone number written in here . . ." Vanished days, and I certainly don't miss having to be a passive smoker in public places! Have you ever seen one of these in use, in a tv programme, an ad, a vintage photo? I'm still surprised that although I have been familiar with cigarette boxes and packets, ashtrays, lighters of all kinds, but have never encountered one of these before.