at long last the earlyglass bible

with the ink barely dry on my last blog where I mentioned David Burton's upcoming book...BANG!  out it comes.....!!!!!!!!

Massive, massive tome of knowledge and database, a total must for any serious earlyglass collector, particularly those interested in seals....but with a pricetag.  At first seemingly expensive, but wen you realise what has gone into it, actually a bargain....

http://www.antiquecollectorsclub.com/uk/store/pv/9781851497553/antique-sealed-bottles-1640-1900/david-burton

take a look through and you'll see what I mean. Though, the fact tat yours truly was involvdin one of the chapters does maybe bias me a little, but see what you think...

earlyglass and e-technology

So there's little me, originally trained as a graphic designer with cut and paste - that's when you actually cut photoproduced typesetting out and pasted it down with cowgum onto artboard, and you drew lines with rotring pens and got ink on your fingers....then some fool came up with computers an the world has gone crazy eve since....
So now I just bottle deal and scrape a living, but I use a laptop, learnt Quark and Indesign,  operate a website ( www.earlyglass.com  - in case you hadn't come across it before), write VERY occasionally a blog, spend hours a day on ebay and various bottle forums, but that's STILL not enough, now I am supposed to walk around with my head stuck in a smart phone walking into lampost and ignoring people trying to make conversation wit me, checking my facebook status and according to the latest successful business advice advertising www.earlyglass.com via facebook and the various bottle interest groups on there. I gotta "network" and "like" everything and everybody on Facebook and twitter if I want to create more business these days.......and....and...

....Yes. Sorry, you can see I'm suffering from "Blue Monday" the latest fashionable disease for 2014. BUT...new year, new resolutions...so determined effort by yours truly to network everywhere and get this thing buzzing a bit, and maybe even earn some living money from this....

 

A fascinating diamond inscribed c1685 onion"G. Lloyd". Can't remember seeing a full name scribed on such an early bottle before, and Welsh too

So where do we go from here? What news? What snippets of fascinating info? What super interesting bits of earlyglass floating about out there this new year? Well, bought a couple excellent bottles and a bit o' early stoneware already, but can't say much more about those for a week or two. A couple late shaft and globes on ebay, one c1675 in America described as an onion, but it didn't take too long to get around the grapevine and went to an acceptable price but still cheapish for the greater market, and another nicely iridescent c1670 with a hole in the neck that would restore superbly well, and was really tempting to me. But, funds aren't limitless and I've already raided the coffers too much this month. Bunches of the sorely missed Chris Mortimer's massive collection of sealed cylinders keep trickling onto the market via BBR and  proving that even although the common examples don't fly they are still selling out, and anything out of the ordinary is doing well. Once this huge and famous collection has dissipated, I think we will see future examples starting to hit new price levels, so get them cheap while you can!...

A super little gloriously tigerglazed and very drunk wine crug c1550. I love this little jug. Totally virgi, not been messd around with like 95% of saltglaze you see now. Some minor nibbling and touchmarks but honest as the day is long...

Will this be the year of the long awaited boost for early glass - David Burton's multi volume "Bible" of earlyglass and seals...including descriptions and attributions for almost every known seal worldwide. The hobby has been waiting for this for 5 years or more. It will certainly herald a renewed interest in seals for the average collector and quite likely bring in some big guns too. Fortunately earlyglass has enough range to please everybody and every pocket.

Talking of which, some really attractive damaged items have come onto the market recently, which represent excellent value for money for the budget collector. If they display well ten who cares that age has touched them. Providing the cost is te fraction of the mint price, which it still is....but this area has ironically seen the greatest rise in value and popularity. I now have more people asking me to find them a damaged shaft and globe than are asking me for a mint one.... Here's a good example of what I mean...

A super little triangle initialled mini onion dated 1707, it has some cracks, but on the collection shelf and even in the hand, you don't see them. Price for mint one? £6000-£8000?, price for this one - £1200...'nuff said....:)

So what else can we expound? Oh yeah, how the Royal Mail can take your parcel with a valuable c1700 onion bottle in it for which you have paid £30+ for Airsure delivery to America, and because the bottle is wreck found and contains some sea water inside, they decree that it has unidentifiable contents, so might be alchohol, so will be inflammable and a danger to aircraft so they decide they can destroy this valuable antique, AND YOU CANNOT DO A THING ABOUT IT!!!! They can't be bothered to return your property, they can just steal it and commit historical vandalism, and they couldn't even be bothered to find out WHAT was inside, so it might have been perfectly harmless seawater, with perhaps. Not a good end to the year....but I'm trying to put that behind me.....

See you all next time?.........

Mark

The earlyglass toad rises once again from it's ooze...

and promises it's bi-annual promise to keep up to date with it's earlyglass blog...
So!...what has been happening since...erm September of last year? Well one of the best bits was a certain major auction at a London auction house that we aren't going to give free advertising to, but we did there pick up this superb sealed shaft and globe....

 

Some excellent iridescent patina that really makes it look it's age and a seal that shows the coat of arms of  Mahon of Strokestown, Co. Roscommon, Ireland. Sir Nicholas Mahon (d. 1680) was High Sheriff in 1664,1666 and 1674. He was a loyal military commander to both Charles 1 and Charles II.

Sobearing the dates in mind, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that Charles II has poured an amicable glass of wine from this bottle in a late night session with his friend and loyal commander?

 

But of course the auction house in their wisdom failed to provide any of this provenance that surely would have helped the seller achieve a higher price, but for which omission we shall ourselves ever be grateful. Now this historical item is theoretically for sale, it is in our stock and theoretically one of you out there may one day own this bottle, but for now this is my precious, and my precious is mine, so keep away! slurp slurp, snigger, whilst I crawl away to my hole to eat some more raw fish and slugs....:)

That'll do for now...

earlyglass - The Return....

...so, after many months out in the wilderness, I just feel it's time to get off my behind and get on with things, plus it's a bit embarrassing to return and find several more followers that I've been letting down...so anyway, what's been happening?
Well for one, there's haaaaarrrrrrd times out there sur there is.... and plenty other collecting hobbies are falling by the wayside, but bottles seem to go from strength to strength, and if not exactly booming, there's still buying and selling opportunities out there, the shows are buzzing and there's plenty of steadfast enthusiasm.....for the right things of course.
Good old Australia is still booming with her mining, and probably half my sales going in that direction, to working guys with spare capital, but am seeing an increasing return of the US once again,  That huge country of eclectic collectors often throws up surprise collectors of the eclectic, who don't all want to haggle you down to the ground but just pleased and grateful to get a beautiful different bottle with some age, and, although there are some crazy guys out there (and I do mean scizophrenic) the majority are real nice friendly and polite. It's a welcome experience in this otherwise cynical world.
But I think my biggest change lately is the realisation I do have to change, change some ways and habits, get onto some of the new bandwagons, spread my wings a bit, work a bit harder  (!!!!), chase up people more, but also help them out some more, and make things more convenient, and probably above all stop prevaricating.

...and so as ever all about me, and little about bottles. No pics, no nuggets of priceless bottle info, but some promises to return with a blog you'll want to return to. One thing I would recommend to anyone interested in the history of 17th/18th century England habits, everyday living and society, read Pepys' diaries.......I've just finished him, copied onto my Kindle (free) and been reading him every  night for weeks, strangely rivetting stuff, weird, you really wouldn't think it would be, but I couldn't put it down. fascinating to read it though and see yourself easily in the same situations, and him behaving exactly how you probably would given a few historical criteria rules to start with, like a modern man, not like those bewigged strangers from hundreds of years ago that we have these assumptions about.
Anyway it's 1am, I'm tired but quite excited to have got back on the bandwagon, ....and so to bed.....

.....now  FEW DAYS LATER.........
(I thought shame to make you all work hard and go to the next blog, so just continue this one....?)

Right where else can I start than by putting up some images of some more recent meaningful items and talk about them a bit.
Many people, knowing I deal a lot (well full time basicly) often ask me what I actually collect. The general fudgy answer is, all my stock is my collection, at least for six months or whatever, and then it changes hands. So essentially I can enjoy lots of super bottles that I couldn't afford to buy outright but I can afford to invest that money for a little while, enjoy the bottle and then sell it on, hopefully make a profit, and get my money back!....well that's the theory anyway!!!!
However, if there's something I do like and sort of collect....or at least tend to try not to sell....though I sometimes do anyway....eventually.....for the right price......if I'm desperate.....sort of thing, then it's the little utilities. Non wine items of varying forms (and that's the interest) small and attractive miniature versions sometimes of their larger wine brothers.

Here's a recent favourite, a small case type utility with an apothecary label for rhubarb, which I guess was to make you "go". The 18th and 19th C occupation of keeping your bowels open is I think legendary!
This one typifies the whittled surface and other attractive qualities often found in these utilities. This one I date 1800, though could be earlier.

Here's another, never seen this form before except as massive wide mouthed case bottle version...

My belief, going from the general shape and size is that is was likely an early mustard. It is freeblown and tapered (my pic makes it look more so) but in all other respects matches the early embossed pontilled "London" Mustards - "Whardales" and similar, and I think this is an earlier verison...but then with all these utilities the basic bottle COULD have been used for almost anything. However we should balance this against the accepted associations of the day of certain shapes with certain usages. If nothing else it made it easier for a populace who were often illiterate to immediately recognise what was likely to be in their bottles. This one of cause is also aqua so one would be more certain of it's probable contents.

So, was aqua sometimes used for this reason? If economy was not a problem and it was a private bottle, might aqua be a further way of identifying the contents, or was it simply a fashionable statement of difference. You will have all seen onions in the classic black glass, and even half size onions, but I was pleased to add another example of this incredibly rare form to my stock (or collection?:)) which not only made a pair but also showed the evolution from the earlier form pre 1700 to a classic later long necked onion form c1700+ (as much as 1710?). The right hand example we got last year, but the left hand example we chased and trapped down  just a few days ago.....

Both, interestingly, have blowpipe pontils of the style one would initially attribute to the continent, yet both these bottles are essentially English forms. Does this mean the same factory? I think so. Does this mean they are English? I believe it too much of a coincidence that we now have two classic English evolutionary forms and stringrims in the same manner blown perhaps a decade apart, both of which being found in UK, and so far no evidence of European forms done in the same way, not to say they are not, simply because of a pontil. In many ways it makes sense that such a rare colour might be blown by one factory or even one glassblower specialising in that concept...who perhaps had a continental background. It is not so long before this period that we see a good ratio of obviously English shaft and globes and transitional forms, blown with blowpipe pontils, obviously from the same reason.

Ok, that will do for now but perhaps I'll look out the aqua mallet I have somewhere with the intriguing message diamond point etched......
Bye!

There's competition and there's jealousy and there's...?.

Oh I've had a grand time this week..... !
Sorry bottle people out there, hoping to pick up some useful earlyglass hints and wrinkles, this blog will be a downright get-it-off-my-chest moan, but then I am 50 so now a fully paid up member of the grumpy old men....and this is my blog and I'll ...how does it go...cry if I want to...cry if i want to...
So here I am on a certain forum, been there several months, putting nice pretty pics of  items I've picked up, the better stuff of course, because it's nice for diggers and collectors to see, stuff they don't see very often, because it usually gets bought by the big money guys and never seen again, because of course I want to show off  a little, and this thread is so popular that it gets pinned, oh my! But this is the bottle world and someone wants to spoil it,  "someone" out there who also is commercially involved in the bottle scene gets a bit jealous/frightened about this,  and they are retentive enough to point out that I am getting these pics on there with, naughty of naughties, my website address and presumably making all sorts of money selling these items to people looking at them on the forum...oh if it was only that easy!...
Ok it's sort of fair enough reaction if you're that way inclined. they themselves are paying money to be associated with this forum and place ads and use the facilities etc etc, and they reckon I am not and should be. But then I'm making sod all out of doing this apart from perhaps some general flag waving publicity for my one man band, so the mods have to rather embarassingly ask me to either pay similar fees or.....well not sure what...
Now for a little while I was half a mind to pull the plug entirely, but that would be entirely what these business people would like, and would disappoint the genuine diggers and collectors who liked the thread and pics, so I go for the literary gagging and "it'll never happen again sir" approach and have my thread unpinned and my addresses removed and I'm not allowed to ever mention that these items might be for sale ever again, for ever and ever, amen.
Now this is a pretty low point in my bottle life. I've come up against competitive reactions before but this sort of pettiness is a first. So what is the answer to my depression? OK, WE FIGHT BACK in a way they won't expect....this is all about the pettiness of money, so lets GIVE  a bottle away, a good one, give it to whoever is lucky enough to win a free draw for it. I've done this before two or three times and it was a really pleasant and refreshing experience, people didn't seem to expect it, done though the forums, and then my real brainwave....if people could enter the draw simply by logging onto the various forums, and the more forums they lg onto the more chances they get, it also gives the forums more new members and more traffic and more interest, and got to be good for the hobby...
So now several days later and after several hundred rather boggled entrants, plus TWO MORE PRIZES added by a couple other pragmatic guys, joining in the fun, good prizes too which I'd like myself, but dammit I can't enter my own draw!  There's always a cloud to the silver lining.:):)
So hundreds of entries so far, and loads of goodwill, and all this unusual generosity of feeling later, I'm feeling a happier bunny, and pretty pleased with myself, and .......oh, yes,.... well unfortunately as a side effect, my name is now on the lips and posts of hundreds of bottle guys worldwide, I've had loads of complimentary emails, quite a few direct sales from new clients and all in all it's pretty much St Mark of  Earlyglass, oh dear! ....Guess I'd better thank the guy who prefers to complain and was worried I'd be profiting by not paying my fees, it would never have happened without him....anyone else want to complain? please?

bottles on ebay ..... or not....

I guess most people reading this will have had some experience of ebay, buying or selling. It's a bit like losing your virginity...well  I'm guessing it's what that might be like :)....a bit frightening, something you haven't done but know everyone else has and they all seem to be very good at it and pretty cool about it all. You also know it will have to happen sometime....

Of course you gotta take precautions. You don't want yourself  or the person you're conducting ebay intimacy with to get landed with responsibilities you aren't ready for.  You make and save your first experimental searches, nobody tells you about the late and sleepless nights constantly checking them over, the having to get up in the middle of the night to see how your potential progeny are doing and ultimately bid for them, then your selling wants constant attention. then the nervous waiting for the safe delivery, then you get the tantrums, the abusive language and the unreasonable behaviour when it isn't what people were expecting, and you sometimes get a disappointment yourself....

But you wouldn't be without it all now despite it all......ah well!

In the real world however, everyone who uses ebay ends up hating it, or rather not it but "them". The arrogance of ebay and it's minions, their seemingly endless desire to screw even more money out of us and to continually fix what isn't broken is now legendary.

On the other hand, unfortunately ebay is still and probably will remain for a long while the biggest continual international market, watched over by millions, the source of bottles from all the continents, from the embarassingly plain and uncollectable bits of machine made grotty trash that some poor deluded individual has wasted time and effort posting and for some reason thinks someone will want to pay money for....to some very nice and very rare items that would take you years to find by any other method. Unfortunately lots of other people also have too much time and can trawl ebay as long as you do and compete for these nice things. Many of them have more money than sense, or let their egos get the better of them. Tie and again you can leave good bids on desperately wanted items, only to have them snatched away in the last few seconds. Some of them pay way, way too much, unless of courseit is an item you are selling...then the ebay sods law rule is that those people are not allowed to spot your items that day, or if they do, suddenly develop a sense of reason and sanity and refuse to bid any more than an insulting low amount on your item. Other sods law rules such as...the number of watchers is inversely proportional to the number of  actual bidders....there is a further level - the more people that email you asking silly questions about the item and want further images and info and show real interest and say how much they want one of these and have been looking for years, the more likely it is that your item will fall flat on it's face with barely a bid on, not even getting to a fraction of a very low reserve....
....why oh why do people waste everybody's time by leaving paltry bids on an item that is blatantly worth a hundred times what they have bid, and then don't bother to increase them at all...

...Ahh but never mind, ebay will turn us all into grumpy old men.  On the other hand every so often, like today I received in the post an item that I bid on and got for it's startng price, that presumably nobody else spotted and bid for, that is so, so rare and is worth 10 times what it cost me... and then ebay is beautiful, and God is lovely and all your family's squabbles and pestering and noise are as the gentle twittering of the chaffinches....for you have succeeded and beaten off the competition.

Of course ebay is a fickle lover, it beguiles and cheats, promises and withdraws its promises, one week an item doesn't get a bid, the next week it flies. One week a common item you'd barely give garden shed space to fetches hundreds of £'s, the next week a rarity gets half what it would at any bottleshow.

In general, ebay is excellent at selling c***p. Not every week, but eventually. Use it to get rid of all your long stored away and forgotten common bottles, but do just make sure they are bottles that nobody else is presently offering. The guy trying to sell an Owbridges Lung Tonic usually wastes his money, but now with the amended listing costs, he's only wasting his time. Equally sealed dated onions do not sell to their full potential acheivable almost anywhere else.  BUT the fees to put a quality bottle on ebay in front of millions of collectors are actually rather cheap in comparison with advertising to those numbers by any traditional methods, so sometimes it makes sense to put a world quality bottle on ebay without the least hope (or rather intention) of selling it....simply for the advertising it produces....

Oh, and for Codd's sake, if you are selling, NEVER (unless you don't actually want to sell it) put a high start price on your bottle....guaranteed KILLER of any potential bidding.

Oh my, just lots of boring ramble and still no pretty bottle pics, oh well live in hope!

leadup to the BIG BOTTLE WEEKEND!!!!

...oooh we're getting excited now! the BBR is coming...!......
as a warmup the Minstead show in Dorset this weekend was a solid little success, always a pleasant atmosphere show, friendly and low pressure. Lots of new people introduced to this fascinating  hobby and several thinking of visiting the Summernational. Hadn't quite dawned on me that many local collectors only go to their local shows, so they can only buy there, the bottles there are the best ones they see in person, and they only sell there. So there are opportunities for buying and selling at every show....but there's nothing like the SummerNational...!
If you've never been to this supreme spectacle of bottles and bottle people socialising, sorry but you can't count yourself a fully fledged bottle collector...and you've missed out on experiencing the biggest bottle buzz on this island, the continent and probably several others....two and a half solid days of bottle buying, bargaining and beguiling. Display competitions that are now blowing away anything I've seen in any other country, with quality, rarity and above all display creativity. Now two auctions, an unreserved bargain burrowing one on Saturday, and the international leading top level item auction on the Sunday, where there will be some stiff competition and not a few ego battles between bidders. Throw in a Sunday morning boot fair (sharpened elbows a necessity), turn a whole village into a bottle equivalent of Glastonbury festival, where every pub in the village will be stacked out with bottlers from all corners of the country, all corners of the world, where Geordies converse with Cornishmen, and Australian collectors swap salad oils with Swedish guys. 40,000square feet of bottle stalls,  a special social evening of  prizegiving, recognition, beer imbibing and bottle story swapping around the tables and bars. Add the Yorkshire openness and friendliness, some good weather, camping nearby for those diehards, and B&B's, hotels and guesthouses for the rest of us softies, full up for miles around....
Almost forgotting the excellent antique centre where I've never yet failed to buy something, and the stallholders Friday afternoon free noshup with the famous hot local pork pies....it just goes on....
There is one warning, Monday withdrawal syptoms!
You really can walk round and round delving into the boxes underneath of boxes of bottles still with their dirt, some of them even dug the day before, and Sunday often has many stalls and stock different to Saturday, so definitely you have to stay both the days.
I think you get the pitcture
I like this show
The highlight of my year.
....which either means my life is very sad....or this show is just such an addiction.
I think it is the latter....