This excellently preserved, thick-walled, slightly bulbous cylindrical footed vessel (Stangenglas), is marked with numerous minute bubbles and some embedded inclusions. Below the lip of the Stange is a decorative band comprised of a double row of white enamelled dots framing a wide band of applied gold leaf incised with a scale pattern, in each element of which is a blue or red enamel dot. The vessel rests on an applied, flared pedestal foot, flanged and folded under. The flattened bottom of the vessel bears a flush but creviced pontil mark. The vessel wall is emblazoned with a crowned double-headed eagle and the coat of arms of the Medici and Habsburg, repeated on the opposite side.

In 1880, Friedrich August O´Bryn noted three Stangengläser with the Medici-Habsburg coat of arms in the Dresden Hofkellerei , two of which are now in the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Pillnitz Castle (inv. nos. 39468 and 39469 ). There, they are located to South Germany or Bohemia, and – presumably with reference to O´Bryn, who tentatively referred the coat of arms to Grand Duke Cosimo II de´ Medici and Maria Magdalena of Austria - dated after their marriage in 1608 .

The comparison with the corpus of Stangengläser of the 16th century proves the previous dating as too late. The glass was most probably made in the second half of the 16th century and the coat of arms therefore must be referred to Archduchess Johanna of Austria . The daughter of Charles V’s brother Emperor Ferdinand I, and sister of Emperor Maximilian II, was married to Grand Duke Francesco (1541-1587), the heir of Cosimo I de´ Medici, in 1565. This was the second attempt to join the Habsburg and Medici dynasties in marriage after a short-lived attempt in 1536 with the nine-month marriage of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici and Margarethe of Austria, daughter of Charles V. The union between Francesco I de’ Medici and Johanna of Austria proved more lasting and laid the foundation for a flourishing relationship and frequent intermarriages between the Habsburgs and the Medici that lasted up until the eighteenth century.

The double-headed eagle and the coat-of-arms, as well as the form of the vessel – somewhat irregular in profile and slightly bulbous –, the flared, slightly depressed, hollow foot with an outwardly folded and flattened rim and the slightly grey cast of the glass itself, all support a Tyrolean origin of this exceptional glass . In 1565, shortly before his marriage, Francesco de ´ Medici stayed at the Innsbruck court. He was a great friend of sciences and the decorative arts, and therefore must have surely visited the nearby glassworks in Hall . This superb armorial glass with an enamel decoration of exceptional quality might very well have been made on the occasion of a historically significant marriage.