Topic: Napoleon crown emblem on bottles

[beleriand]

Hi!

Does anyone know if putting the Napoleon "N" with a crown emblem on bottles as mere decoration was a common practice in the 19th century, or would it have been reserved for official used? 

The reason I ask is that I have a glass scent bottle, which I'm pretty sure is an authentic 19th century piece, that has the emblem etched into it and gilded.  I wouldn't think anything of it, but I found a larger cologne bottle with what appears to be the exact same emblem, with almost the exact same details, that was sold by Christie's and claimed to have belonged to Napoleon himself.  Here are pictures of both bottles:

https://imgur.com/a/AnOMY

Sorry about the poor picture quality.  Starting from the bottom of the emblem, there are the same vertical lines shading the rear inside edge of the crown. There's a band with five dots depicting jewels (believe me it's there and clear). There are five birds, two facing left, one facing forward, two facing right.  Finally, there's a ball topped with a cross on top.  I've looked at a bunch of different versions of this emblem, but these are the only two that I've found that had exactly the same details.  Unfortunately, the cap on my bottle isn't the original one.  You can't tell from the pic, but it's obvious in person.

I don't have the provenance for the item, and I know that without it it's pretty much impossible to tell whom it belonged to, which is why I asked that initial question.   

Thanks.
   

[Anne]

Hi and welcome to the board. I've removed your duplicate post from our France forum as we only need one question and the proper place is Glass. Moderators can move topics around as needed at a later date but if they start here then we know where we are.

I wonder if this is a wee brandy flask that m'lady carried in her reticule in case she felt faint, being overly corseted? The bigger one is more likely to be a decanter than a cologne, I'd suspect. Decanters can be found in various sizes - perhaps this is a bedside version?

[beleriand]

Sure, thanks.

It's definitely a scent bottle.  I collect them.  I don't know if you were just making a joke about the corsets, but that's really why scent bottles were carried.  "Scent" is actually fragrant smelling salts that women would carry in case they needed to be resuscitated from fainting, which I guess really was caused by their corsets being tied too tightly (that seems hard to believe to me, though).  I have a few that still have the salts in them.  I've yet to smell them.

As for the other bottle, that's what Christie's identified it as.  Cologne bottles do often look a lot like decanters, but they're smaller.  That bottle is only 6 inches tall to the top of the stopper.  It could be a decanter, though. 

[Anne]

Overly corseted was definitely no joke - the women were laced up so tightly that they would faint through restrictions to breath and blood supply. It must have been awful!  Thank goodness for elasticated waistbands and loose t-shirts and no more laced-up corsets!

Scent more commonly means perfume here, which would be the bottles that contained perfume or cologne on a dressing table (that's my area of interest - toilet or trinket sets) so we tend to refer to the ones like yours (at least in the UK) as sal volatile or smelling salt bottles so as not to confuse them with the other sort. It's interesting how differently things are named in different places though.  

I remember being given smelling salts to sniff when I was a child by a very old aunt - just because I wanted to know about them. They are very sharp! Really wakes your brain up. 

One of our members wrote the definitive book on decanters: http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,19157.0.html
It's also worth mentioning that auction houses don't always know the right answers, and some of the folks who work in them come here to ask about stuff too. 

I hope that you get a proper answer about your piece - I've seen the crowned N on loads of things, mainly to do with Napoleon brandy though.

[beleriand]

I know how they feel.  I gained ~60 pounds (27kg) from some medication I was taking and now I have to squeeze into everything I own.

we tend to refer to the ones like yours (at least in the UK) as sal volatile

Interesting - I've never seen that term before, and I do a lot of searching on the-saleroom.com.  Most of their auctions are based in the UK.  I do love new search terms.

Really wakes your brain up. 

Yep. Powerlifters actually sniff them before attempting their lifts.

I was unfamiliar with the brandy.  That's why everything was going over my head.

Thanks for the info.