BOTTLES
The Trapnell collection contained an early seventeenth-century bottle, with a seal of a king’s head; another dated Henry Galshell, 1700; another inscribed T. Bellamy, 1773. I own one bearing “C. Yoxall, 1778” in raised letters on a raised lozenge. These are all of dark, thick glass, and are short-necked and tun-bellied. A little later, in 1786, for instance, the shape became like that of a beer bottle to-day, but larger.
The rectangular, shouldered spirit bottles, with separately made short necks, and engraved or gilded, are usually Dutch, and were perhaps enclosed in cases, something like “tantalus” bottles. There are tall, embossed spirit bottles, often of coloured glass, with cut-glass stoppers. There are cut-glass English bottles, decanter-shaped but stopperless, a cork being used. Holster bottles were a kind of flask carried in the saddle holster. Bottles for oil and vinegar and spices resembled cruet bottles as a rule. Scent bottles, large, in plain glass, are found; small scent bottles, cut or coloured, or mounted with silver or pinchbeck stoppers, exist in great numbers; I own a Bristol scent bottle which is cut like a shell cameo, through two layers of coloured glass, one pink, one opal, down to the basal layer of plain glass; it cost me 6s. 6d.