Space-saving, multi-seat furniture fetches surprisingly low prices and plays a highly practical role in these days of cramped living accommodation.

The terms sofa and settee are virtually interchangeable today, although they originated from very different sources.

`Sofa‘ comes from the Arabic word suffah or the Turkish sopha (the dais on which the Grand Vizier received guests) but came to refer to any movable seat on which it was possible to recline. ‘Settee‘, on the other hand, probably comes from the earlier English `settle‘, and described a seat with back and arms for two or more people. (more…)

Scottish silver

Scottish marks are known as early as the middle of the fifteenth century. By 1681 the goldsmiths of Edinburgh had adopted a variable date letter and abandoned the deacon’s mark instituted in 1457 for the mark of the Assay Master. This in its turn was substituted by a thistle in 1759. The town mark is a triple-towered castle.

Although there was an active group of goldsmiths in Glasgow, mentioned in records as early as 1536, no Glasgow silver earlier than approximately 1681 appears to be marked with anything but perhaps the maker’s mark and burgh arms: a tree with a bird on the top, a hand bell suspended from the branches and across or below the trunk a salmon with a ring in its mouth (termed the fish, tree and bell mark). (more…)

Looking at the row of old bottles some people might well wonder what possible interest or attraction they might have. Surely the onlyperson likely to collect them would be a dustman!

Yet anyone with a taste for history and interest in old things can find a fascinating quest in old serving bottles— or “sealed” bottles as they are sometimes called. For in many cases it is possible not only to date them but to trace their actual owner anything up to three hundred years ago.

These bottles go back to the time when an establishment of any consequence—a big house or a college—would buy its wine by the barrel, and have it brought to the tables in bottles. At first these bottles, short, round and dumpy, were made of stoneware or delftware and they often bore the initials or arms of the original owner, a date, and sometimes the name of the wine, say Rhenish or Sack. (more…)