Page 32 - BBR magazine 140 - 30yrs issue

BBR’s Editor is wowed by the best book on black glass for half a century...
32
Antique Sealed Bottles
1640-1900 by David Burton
David Burton bought his first sealed bottle in December 1975
at a Christies wine
auction. These
sales, as many a
dealer of bottles
knows, often
included a few old
empty bottles that
might turn up at the
back of cellars of
vintage wine - thrown
in almost as an afterthought in such sales at the time as the last lots. In his introduction to this marvellous set of books he describes the moment he became a bottle collector:
“The bottle was sealed in
a very clear and crisp fashion ‘J/ Meardon/ Taviftock/ 1780’, but what attracted me was not its rarity, which, being dated 1780, was quite old, but the colour of the glass - jet black, with an attractive sheen when placed under a light. It was out of shape, slightly ‘wonky’, but with a large, clear and definitive seal on the side of the bottle giving details of the original owner, and with the ‘s’ in Tavistock in the style of the old ‘f’. This indeed, was a find to relish.”
How many of us will identify with that moment of discovery? The exhibition titled ‘The English Glass Bottle’ held at the County Museum, Truro, Cornwall between 1 July & 30 September 1976 was the next spur to his collecting. This (as he records in his text) was also the year in which the £1,000 price barrier was broken when Roger Dumbrell bought a dated
shaft and globe, Bydder/ 1674,
from the London dealer, Richard Dennis, for £5,000, a truly amazing world record price at the time which stunned the bottle
world. Roger went on to buy from Sheelagh, Lady Ruggles- Brise’s collection (Sotheby’s, 13 July 1987) the author of the earliest in depth study of sealed bottles. As he points out, her
book was pioneering but had quite a few errors. Dumbrell produced an updated study but David’s three volume
Left: David Burtons first ever
purchase - the ‘J/ Meardon/
Taviftock/ 1780’ cylinder - from a
Christies auction... for
the princely sum of £130!
study is now the absolute bible for collectors.
It costs a whopping £250 - though BBR has arranged a very special opening deal (enclosed prer-order form with this magazine - but hurry, offer closes end of July!). What you get for that is three sumptuous volumes (1800+ pages!), hundreds of beautiful, very carefully photographed pictures, and a quite incredible amount of information.
Volume 1 deals with all aspects of ‘sealed bottles & the families that owned them’: background to the bottles, what sort of people owned them, Davids’ thoughts about the changes in shape, bottles from particular areas (Wales, West Country etc) and glasshouses. It also explains how to interpret the devices (heraldry and monograms); the treatment of them in museums (often very poor with items off show/ little studied); how to collect, and an analysis of prices over time/ current trends.
Volume 2 is devoted to dated seals & undated 17th Century bottles. Volume 3 has undated sealed bottles 1700-1900 (both names and separately crests & coats of arms). Additionally it has stipple engraved bottles (a fantastic bonus) and some foreign seals (mostly wine growers, but not solely). He also carefully details college bottles, ordinance marks, and Ricketts bottles and just about every possible grouping. The days of minimal (picture and a current price) type guides is past. As we tried in ‘Deadly Pleasures’,
a record over time is
what is needed to