Web Description:
In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, English wine bottles were made in full and half sizes, and with and without seals. This example represents the half-size capacity (approximately half a liter). Wine bottles made in the shape of an onion (1670– 1730) preceded the taller cylindrical bottles that are still in use today. These utilitarian objects survive in large numbers, but this bottle is unusual in that it has a handle with a thumbpiece. The application of a handle to an ordinary bottle marked the start of the development of the decanter bottle, which replaced the serving bottle about 1730. Serving bottles were used in taverns and to serve guests at the dinner table in upper-class English homes. Empty bottles were taken to wine merchants or breweries, where they were refilled directly from the barrel. The fact that some half-size bottles bear seals, which typically displayed the initials of the bottles’ owners, suggests that smaller bottles were also used for refills, and not just as serving bottles at the table. Similar bottles are described and illustrated in Andy McCon¬nell, The Decanter: An Illustrated History of Glass from 1650, Woodbridge, U.K.: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2004, pp. 37, 40, 43, and 65, and figs. 39, 40, 44, 45, 52, 54, and 85; and Willy van den Bossche, Antique Glass Bottles: Their History and Evolution (1500–1850), Woodbridge, U.K.: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1988, pp. 71–75, 90, and 91, and figs. 9–17, 38, and 39.
