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!