
Pasglazen were used for drinking games in 17th-century Holland. Participants had to drink exactly from one horizontal mark to the next. In case they drank too much, they had to drink down to the next mark, and so forth. Of course, the more inebriated one became, the more difficult it was to precisely reach the next mark—thus precipitating even more imbibing. Because the users of such glasses frequently broke them in the course of their drunken revelries, only a small number of them have come down to us. Their inclusion in still life paintings of the time, however, show just how popular they were.