Perfect breast fitting in a wineglass?

Posted by ESC on January 20, 2003

In Reply to: the perfect breast fitting in a wineglass? posted by R. Berg on January 20, 2003

: : I'm looking for this adage for a friend who's doing an art project and I'm looking for the origin and the exact wording of this saying.

: Oh, thank God. I was afraid you were scouting around for models.

I couldn't find the expression in either my old or new Barlett's. Doing a Google search, I found one site that referred to it as a French saying. And I found a couple of references to queens having various glasses molded upon their breasts:

"Those things that look like sherbet glasses did not appear until sometime in the mid 18th century. For example, the famous painting by Jean Francois de Troy, The Oyster Lunch, c. 1720, shows only flutes. There are lots of dubious mammary theories about the sherbet-glass's origin. Molded on the breast of Mme. Pompadour? The breast of Mme. DuBarry? Another theory is that the shape was molded on the breast of Marie Antoinette--but not to be used for a wineglass. The mold was taken by the royal china factory at Sevres to produce ceramic dishes for serving milk from the cows at Marie's model farm. Whatever its origins, the sherbet-like glass is a genuinely terrible design."
www.winejoe.com/ wineroad/wrwinesglasses.htm

"By the way, the breasts in wine glasses thing is wrong. Champaigne glasses, true champaigne glasses, are shaped exactly like Queen Anne's breasts, and were designed specifically for a special occasion (either her coming of age, her ascent to the throne, her wedding... whatever.) The point is that the perfect breast does not have to fit a wine glass... and Queen Anne's weren't perfect, either. You have your stories mixed up."
conversatron.com/ archive/17582.html

That should spelled "champagne," by the way.