Glass Message Board
Glass Identification - Post here for all ID requests => Glass => Topic started by: ian the sculptor on April 16, 2022, 04:14:36 PM
-
I assume this tiny handmade bottle is for perfume. But has anyone any thoughts on age and where it was made? It measures just over 3.5 inches long.
Thanks
Ian
-
Interesting piece !not something I’ve come across before,has the glass got bubbles and bits in it ?
-
I'm being cautious because I really don't know, but the design, pincering etc on the bottle and the glass make me think it's quite an old piece and possibly designed for holding drops of religious water or something like that on shrine visits or something.
m
-
I wonder if it's for smelling salts rather than perfume? It looks like it should have had a top to keep the salts in, perhaps like this one... https://www.antique-gown.com/en/showcases-objects/smelling-salts-bottle,-silver,-ca-1820-1830.html (https://www.antique-gown.com/en/showcases-objects/smelling-salts-bottle,-silver,-ca-1820-1830.html)
-
No bubbles that I can see and it was difficult to tell if the black specks are in the glass or inside the bottle, so I gave it a wash and they were mainly specks of dust. There does appear to be very minuscule bits when looked at with an eye glass, but not noticeable otherwise.
Those are both interesting suggestions. No sign of it having a top as such, Anne, so I imagine a cork stopper, but that could have had a decorative metal finial. If it were for religious water then a simple cork could have been sealed with wax, but certainly no signs of any fitting on the outside of the neck that would have come from a metal top as in Anne's example.
Ian
-
Along similar lines, was it not the case a very ;) long time ago, that when the rich were out and about, they held scented posies and nosegays to help disguise the stench of sewage and other people in the streets? Would this be a vessel for such a perfume?
Small enough for the hand, and discrete. Small enough to bury in with some flowers which did not have enough scent on their own?
-
Smelling bottles, scent bottles, or pungents as they were sometimes termed very popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. They seem to cover all the the decorating techniques and types of glass. Generally a bottle such as yours would be dated late 18th or early 19th century and most likely English.
-
Searching the net after the previous suggestions, the closest I’ve found is this one. It’s slightly larger at 4.8 inches tall. Described as a “C16th Facon de Venise glass bottle with applied Rigaree” Glass in the “fashion of Venice” but made in other European countries was popular.
2 photos of the same bottle it seems.
Ian
Mod: Copyright images removed. See them at https://www.barnebys.co.uk/auctions/lot/16th-c-facon-de-venise-glass-bottle-w-applied-rigaree-Oym3Nhldxp (https://www.barnebys.co.uk/auctions/lot/16th-c-facon-de-venise-glass-bottle-w-applied-rigaree-Oym3Nhldxp)
-
That's what I had in mind exactly. And probably exactly that bottle. However having searched the collections and read up in my books, all the bottles seem to be squarer and larger than your little bottle.
But it does remind me of those. They seemed to have a little lid of wax with a string around the neck.
If they aren't your photographs the mod will need to remove them from the board though due to copyright :)
Anyway, it's a very interesting piece. A lovely find.
m
-
Then while those images are still here, I have looked carefully at the rigaree - it is much crisper, neater and tidier on the square bottle than it is on Ian's, I'm afraid.
Very similar items, but I would doubt the same manufacturer or even age.
-
These little bottles have been widely collected in the U.S.A. for the last 70+ years. Still popular to this day. Especially ones in color, pattern moulded, blown moulded and free blown.
In their book" American Bottles & Flasks" "and their Ancestry"by Helen McKearin and Kenneth M. Wilson c. 1978 they show clear examples much like yours in shape and quiling as probably English and possibly American. Hard to tell as the prevailing taste of the time (18th early 19th c. U.S.) favored English style/design in most wares. The collector term for the shape would be "corseted".
A cursory search on Norman C. Heckler website of past auctions shows some colorful examples in auction #141 from 2016. Norman C. Heckler probably the premier auction house in the U.S.A. for early bottles.
-
Yes, I wasn't daring to presume the same age or maker, Sue, just referencing the only thing I could find. Apologies about using someone else's photos there - I didn't think of copyright issues.
That's an interesting reference site, Cagney.
I guess that what went inside hand-made little bottles like this might depend on who bought them. Or do you think style and shape dictated function?
Ian
-
Interestingly Sue, I bought a beaker the other week which appears, to my untrained eye, to be an old copy of a medieval European beaker with rigoree and blue trailing. Looking at an original on the Corning Museum site the original rigoree was much freer and less precise than mine. I assumed the glass artist making mine was used to being more accurate. But that again was just me guessing. I'm no expert on old glass (quite the opposite). It's an interesting beaker so I might try and post that for people to see on another posting.
Ian
-
All very good points, Ian.
I was more thinking that ultra-top quality might be an indicator of true ancient Venetian glass rather than facon de Venise produced somewhere else, and the images with the really neat blue rigaree was supposedly true Venetian or at least very good facon de Venise.
I was not suggesting that the quality of work on the rigaree was an indicator of age, although it might read that way.
It was more a suggestion that the higher the quality, the more likely ancient Venice is involved.
-
Evidently many recipes for contents. Depending on what you would rather smell other than what was around you. Lots of newspaper advertisements in America and England for these bottles from 18th century onward. Very fashionable in the 18th century to sell within a carrying case of shagreen, ivory, pierced bone, silver, or tortoiseshell. Of course made in other countries as well.
-
This is another useful reference site for anyone interested in these small bottles:
https://antiquebottlehunter.com/smelling.html
-
;D Some of the bottles on that website look as if they belong in Ivo Haanstra's "Blue Henry" book, about sputum bottles. ;)
-
This one has some similarities (following Cagney and Sue's leads) to yours:
https://oldsouthjerseyglass.com/product_details/NjM5
-
I vote Spanish 20th century.
-
Hello Ivo! :-*
-
Hi Sue!