April 25th, 2020 : Whimseys

[xoxoxoBruce]

You’ve seen a Ship in a Bottle, and maybe some other construction in a bottle, these all come under the heading of Whimsey Bottles.

The spread of bottle whimseys in the United States is owed to a convergence of three trends in the late 19th century: “craftsmen with whittling skills and the leisure time to create, the mass production and ready availability of clear glass bottles, and earlier examples from various European traditions to inspire imitation and innovation.” Jones explains that there were four primary motifs seen in European bottle whimseys that became the basis for this form of folk art—religious scenes, mining scenes, spinning or weaving tools, and ships in bottles.

The art of bottle whimseys appears to have gotten its start in Germany with religious miniatures. From there, the trend spread across Europe and the United States. “I have seen very early shrines built by German nuns and monks with carved crucifixes and surrounding tools, but not put into a bottle,” Jones says. “They have three sides and a bottom, and a crucifix in the middle surrounded by what they call ‘instruments of the passion.’” Whether made in Europe or the United States, religious bottle whimseys often mirrored this approach, with a central crucifix flanked by iconic Biblical objects.
“The ones that originate in Germany,” Jones continues, “if they have a Jesus at all, almost always have paper Jesuses on the cross, either cut from a prayer card or drawn on paper. This is almost never the case with American ones.”

“The vast majority of whimseys date from after 1900, even 1910,” Jones explains. “They didn’t become something everyday people could make until bottles became common and thought of as disposable. My guess is that the first disposable small bottles were patent medicine bottles; so many of my older bottles are stamped with the name of a drugstore.”

“The earliest ship in glass, which is not really a bottle, that we know of is in a museum in Europe,” Jones says. “It’s in a big glass bubble, full rigging.” Created in 1784 by Venetian sea captain Giovanni Biondo, this miniature ship built in a blown-glass oval and mounted on a wooden stand is now in the collection at the Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Hansestadt Lübeck. “Ships in bottles were rarely made on ships since bottles were scarce on board, but they were popular subjects after 1900,” she adds. According to Jones, the creation of “ships-in-a-bottle” really took off after “Popular Mechanics” began holding contests for these miniature replicas in the first half of the 20th century.

I’d rather see whisky in my bottle.

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