Glass Message Board
Glass Identification - Post here for all ID requests => Glass => Topic started by: Mdjlucan on January 27, 2015, 02:14:50 PM
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Found this glass seal on the Thames For sure I think it's come from a onion bottle can anyone put a ID on this for me possibly the makers name thanks
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Hi and welcome. :)
I suspect you are asking rather a lot!
Does the medallion have a flat back? How would it have been attached to any bottle (unless by the heat of the hot glass itself), and so how could it have come off a bottle?
Is there a possibility it might be a button?
There are known glass buttons with impressed patterns on them, (some can be attributed to a maker called Pirelli) they have a flat back where a small metal plaque is glued on with a loop for the button securing bit to be attatched to. There was a small "kirby grip" type of thing to secure it on the other side of the button hole.
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Thanks I will send you a picture of the back of the glass okay
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Picture of the back of it
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your photos are fab thanks :)
Have you tried any of the antique bottle collector forums? Just thinking they might have a clue what the FW stands for and some idea of the logo used.
m
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Any links to any good ones
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???
Thanks for the pic!
It doesn't look anything like my Pirelli button on the back, and it doesn't look as if it has broken off something either.
It seems (to me at any rate) to be an intact item.
But it does have an extra layer of glass under it, is there any way it could have been mounted, (for example in a ring), to have been a seal for putting on melted wax on letters?
I clearly need new glasses :-[ - I can *sort of* make out a ship on it, no letters...
Old bottle collecting is sort of an area all on its own; it doesn't tend to have much crossover with the areas we deal with here, and I'm sorry, I don't personally have any links to relevant forums.
I do love old bottles - I just can't afford them, they're WAAAA-Y out of my league. 8)
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There is a cross on a amount With the initials F W
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I just googled onion bottle + forum and came up with this;
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/what/349551-need-help-early-wine-bottle-seal-id.html
and this
http://www.antique-bottles.net/forum/Onion-Bottle-Info-Request-m627180.aspx
There do seem to be plenty around. :)
Apologies that this isn't an area we really know much about. It's simply because there is already a well established market in this very specialised subject.
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Hi,
Nice find,tracking its origin could be a little tricky though , seals were fairly common in the 17th and 18th c on wine bottles and they usually refer to the owner,not the maker of the bottle ,if it is an owners seal then the other details may help you track it down,coat of arms etc , I don't have a copy but the following book may be helpful and probably available on library loan "Understanding Antique Wine Bottles" by Roger Dumbrell which at the time of publication in 1983 lists all recorded seals from whole bottles and fragments,there may well be an example of this seal in there.
and to answer Sue(M) , they were put on at manufacture , a blob of hot glass on the side of the bottle then the seal impressed , many bottles ended up in the Thames,probably thrown away when broken then over 300 years they get all bust up and the seals become detached and isolated.
cheers ,
Peter.
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Ok, Peter, thanks. I bow to your vast and superior knowledge of really old glass and drinking related themes.
I didn't think that seals impressed onto blobs of hot glass on a hot bottle would come off, sort of intact.
I assumed they'd end up breaking bits of the bottle off with them, or leaving bits behind.
I have no experience of how glass behaves over periods of hundreds of years. I know you do, (but it has nothing to do with your personal age).
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Hi ,
Looks to me like there are the remains of the body of the bottle on the rear of the seal , it may have come of with shards etc but in 250/300 years the sea and sand have done there job of smoothing it all out.
cheers ,
Peter.
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It certainly is a seal from a bottle. Here are some poor pictures from my collection of the type of bottle it may have come from, together with some trays of detached seals that have been found in fields, rivers etc when the bottle has long-since been broken. These are academically interesting, and a lot cheaper than the complete bottles!
(http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e31/cobaltcodd1/bottles_zpsvjycblqu.jpg) (http://s36.photobucket.com/user/cobaltcodd1/media/bottles_zpsvjycblqu.jpg.html)
(http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e31/cobaltcodd1/seals_zpsolp7jxgc.jpg) (http://s36.photobucket.com/user/cobaltcodd1/media/seals_zpsolp7jxgc.jpg.html)
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:)
What a wonderful collection!
Thank-you so much for joining and posting these images for us to enjoy.