After boxes and caskets, let’s look at bottles. Bottles for scent and smelling salts, pomades and creams, for snuff, medicine, wine, beer, spirits, acids—in other words for everything that needs a stopper rather than a lid. Like boxes, they come in every sort of material, from porcelain to silver, from gold to stoneware.

I believe that one of these days collectors will wake up to the fact that the last hundred years has been the making of more collectable bottles than at any other period of history. Glassmakers, metalworkers, potters, and now plastic manufacturers, have been designing and making bottles, not only as lovely works of art and craftsmanship, but as mass production items which nevertheless are examples of excellent and interesting design. The astute collector will therefore look not only at the exquisite things of the past with which we start our brief review of bottles, but also at what has been made in the last century by the factories. Much of this is now beginning to take on that interesting look of the once commonplace thing which no longer does its original job, and which has acquired a new strangeness, even beauty, in our eyes.

Perfumesand Essences

Once upon a time every lady carried her “smelling bottle” of essences, aromatic vinegars and other means of fending off offensive smells and reviving drooping spirits. Today we see all these charming trifles in the antique shops, or in the big sales rooms. At one end of the scale are the exquisite (and fabulously expensive) “toys” in Chelsea or Continental porcelain, modelled as cherubs, milkmaids, parrots, harlequins, as well as the ordinary shapes. With them are the famous “Battersea” enamels, most of which, however, were made in South Staffordshire or later on in Birmingham and on the Continent. Also in the wealthy collector’s range are those in opaque white glass, much of it made in Bristol and Warrington,, painted with enamels or transfer-printed in the same way as porcelain. Even those in “Bristol” blue glass, especially when finely enamelled, will cost us dear nowadays, while Derbyshire “blue-john”, that natural stone with its mixed purple and yellow markings, which used to be fairly reasonably priced, is now up among the leaders. At this same period Wedgwoods turned out some attractive bottles, with blue and white jasper medallions, designed by Lady Templeton and others. Others were made wholly of jasper, in circular, oval and other shapes with reliefs of Venus and Cupid, zephyrs and other classical subjects, surrounded by wreaths and garland borders.

Antique Collector MagazineMore easily to be found are those much later Victorian bottles in ruby, blue and green glass, some of them long and slim, with gilding or the traces of it. There is also the double-ended bottle, with silver caps, scent at one end and aromatic vinegar for fainting fits at the other. Scent bottles are also to be found in Mary Gregory glass, with its enamelled painting of Victorian children, and also in what is called overlay or flashed glass, whereby glass with different coloured layers are cut so that the various layers show through in the design. All these different types of glass are described in “Collectable Glass” in this series.

They are also to be found in white or coloured milk glass, or slagware, sometimes in long narrow bottles, sometimes in small ones shaped as ducks, bears, fish or dogs, or impressed with Japanese designs. But these, I suspect, are the manufacturer’s bottles I mentioned at the beginning, now with their labels missing or paint washed off. In the same class, probably, are the little clear glass shoes and boots, some of which are still found carrying the tiny scent bottles they left the factory with. But, as I say, all these bottles, when you can find them, are worth looking for and sorting out.

Look, too, for the clear glass bottles in the shapes of pistols, pigs, dogs, standing figures which once contained liquor or sweets. Some of these go back to Nailsea days, in the heavy watery glass of those days, and are priced accordingly; but a great many are fairly recent. The wise collector will learn to differentiate between these and early ones which are in the form of amusing animals with looped tails and holes in their snouts for a cork.

If you are very lucky you may come across one of those lovely Lalique bottles, with their moulded figures in frosted and clear glass, used for the most expensive scents.

Pretty bottles can also be found in Victorian glazed majolica (see “Collectable China”) in stoneware of various kinds, and in modern Dutch versions of delftware—though not to be confused with real old delftware. In fact there is almost as wide a range of pottery bottles as glass ones.

Some people go in for the stoneware spirit bottles which were very popular in Regency and Early Victorian times. They are sometimes in buff or brown stoneware, sometimes in lighter earthenware with a shiny dark brown glaze all over, and they come in all manner of amusing—though it has to be admitted not particularly beautiful—shapes. Some are made up into figures—of politicians, Royalty, stage figures like Jenny Lind: they also came shaped as books, powder flasks, pigs, potatoes, clocks, pistols, barrels and other things. Except for rarities these bottles can be found for a couple of pounds, and they give a fascinating account of the interests and whimsies of their day. There are some later ones, made at the end of the nineteenth century depicting the politicians 4f that era. Doultons of Lambeth and various Chesterfield potters were among those making these wares.

The Chinese and Japanese have been sending us bottles in all manner of shapes and materials for a very long time now. Most of the ones you see are snuff bottles, and there are many ardent collectors of these—as you may tell from the prices they make. Some are in porcelain, painted with blue or copper red enamelling, some in coloured or opaque glass, or carved out of semi-precious stones. There are others in the wonderful monochrome glazes which are worth a collection of their own, often with figures in relief. The collector of Chinese bottles likes to explore the significance of designs and symbols—almost every decorative device has some sort of meaning and message. Sometimes a bottle will still have its little stick with a spade end, to pick up the snuff

What other kinds of bottles are there? I’m afraid we haven’t nearly exhausted them even now. There are the flat pilgrim bottles, in priceless pottery, originally from the East but also made in homely earthenware in England, as with our Sussex one where the star decoration is stamped in by hand with printer’s type. These were made down to the early nineteenth century. Mintons, Worcester and other potters made them in porcelain, and of course one often sees them in the heavily decorated “Satsumn” designs of nineteenth-century Japan. Goss china, too, has its quota of little bottles.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Fine Bottles Small and Large Collection