Connoisseur Collectibles

 

QUESTION: I love wine. And while I’m not what you call a connoisseur, I do have an appreciation for fine wine and wine culture. Over the years, I’ve assembled a collection of wine labels and about half a dozen antique corkscrews. I’d like to collect other wine-related items but am not sure what to collect. What advice would you give me to start a serious wine-related collection? 

ANSWER: You’re off to a great start. However, you need to research the history of wine making to know all the objects available to collect. In addition, you need to set a budget. Older, ancient wine-related objects can be extremely expensive. 

People have produced wine for around 8,000 years. Evidence of ancient wine production dates to 6,000 BCE in the Republic of Georgia. The development of pottery made fermenting wild grapes grown in what’s now Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, as well as coastal and southeastern Turkey and northern Iran easier.

In ancient Egypt, wine played a ceremonial role. Trade introduced winemaking into the Nile Delta around 3,000 BCE. By this time, people had begun growing grapes in vineyards. By the end of the Old Kingdom, five distinct wines, probably all produced in the Delta, constituted a canonical set of provisions for the afterlife.

But much of modern winemaking came from the ancient Greeks. Wine historians believe that retsina, a white aromatic wine produced in Greece today, is a carryover of the ancient practice of lining wine jugs with tree resin, which gave the wine a distinct flavor.

But of all the ancient cultures, the Romans had the biggest impact on the development of winemaking. Wine was an integral part of the Roman diet, and winemaking was a precise and thriving business. The expansion Winemaking expanded so much that by 92 CE Emperor Domitian was forced to pass the first wine laws.

During the Middle Ages, people from all social classes drank wine where grapes were grown. 

Today, more people have an appreciation for fine food and wine. And unlike objects associated with the preparation, eating, and storage of food, those associated with wine have been less popularized. 

While corkscrews are the most commonly collected of wine-related items, collectors are also interested in ephemera such as wine tags and wine holders. Early postcards, advertising and travel posters are usually colorful and make a nice addition to a collection, as do antique wine racks and holders. In addition, some collectors include wine tasters, funnels, champagne taps, and bottle stoppers in their collections.

Decanter labels, a general term intended to include labels for wines, spirits and sauces, as well as toiletries and medicines are also of interest to collectors. 

Also known as bottle tickets or bottle tags, decanter labels are commonly seen in silver or silver plate, although they were made in a number of other materials, including enamel, porcelain, mother-of-pearl and horn. Collectors look for a variety of different aspects including hallmarks, maker's marks and label design, which vary from plain bin labels used in cellars to beautiful, ornate labels which once adorned fine decanters, elaborate cruets and delicate toilet water bottles.

Other wine-related collectibles include wine coasters, goblets, tankards, port funnels, wine coolers, wine. jugs and pewter tankards. apparatus such as cellar equipment, corking machines. presses, barrel tools, vineyard tools, port decanting cradles, ceramic bin or cellar rack labels and numbers are also garnering interest. Wine collectibles can be displayed anywhere. Collectors often adorn their home bars with wine-related items.

For collectors whose budgets allow, there are ancient and antique wine bottles, wine coolers, antique wine glasses, and more available. 

By far, the most popular wine-related antique/collectible is the corkscrew. Early corkscrews weren’t just intended to open wine. During the 18th and 19th centuries, many items used cork for closer, including beverages of all sorts, medicines, apothecaries, foods, sauces and perfumes. Eventually, most of these items were packaged in other forms, but wines and other spirits still required a corkscrew.

The first American corkscrew patent was issued in 1851. Since that time, more than 1,000 corkscrew patents have been issued in the United States alone, giving collectors an endless selection of shapes, styles and themes in a variety of price ranges.

The Rockwell Clough Company of Alton, New Hampshire, produced a number of wood-sheathed advertising corkscrews for businesses ranging from breweries to laundries and insurance agencies. These have a patent date of October 16, 1900 Those made in the 19th century often had carved ivory, bone or tusk handles and can sell for three figures. There are also corkscrews, dating to about the turn of the 20th century which double as walking sticks.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "folk art" in the 2023 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Whiskey by the Jug

 

QUESTION: Recently, while browsing the tables of a local flea market, I discovered a cute little porcelain jug with the name “Old Maryland 1881...St. Louis, Mo.” Stamped on the bottom was the mark “K.T.K./CHINA.” Can you tell me what company made this and what would the jug have contained?

ANSWER: Little ceramic jugs like this usually held whiskey. They were a gimmick used by distillers to promote their liquors. The firm of Knowles, Taylor & Knowles Company of East Liverpool, Ohio, made many of them and their “K.T.K./CHINA” mark the bottom of many of them.

From the early 17th century, people drank liquor regularly. And there were always people who viewed it as evil and sought to prevent its use, usually by taxation. In 1753, the legislature of the Colony of New York established an excise tax. By the 1850s, at least 13 states had enacted some type of prohibition laws against the use of liquor, yet by the Civil War, most of these laws had either been repealed or declared unconstitutional.

The Civil War Excise Law of 1862, which established a license for "retail dealers in liquors," originally exempted pharmacists. Two years later, Congress amended the law to apply a $1.50 per gallon tax on all distilled spirits that also applied to pharmacists. But in 1870, Congress again amended the law permitting pharmacists to dispense alcohol for "medicinal purposes.”

There are some Knowles, Taylor & Knowles china whiskey jugs that have the words "expressly for medicinal use" imprinted on them. An ad in the Daily Crisis of East Liverpool, Ohio, on September 10, 1892, stated, “Cholera, the best and finest prevention of this dread disease is to use a few drops of Diamond Club Pure Rye in every drink of water." The distiller declared this whiskey to be “officially recognized by the medical profession in every part of the United States as the purest on the market and is used extensively of medicinal purposes, in kidney diseases and ailments of a like character. It is acknowledged to be unequaled as a bracer and appetizer and as a rejuvenator of a debilitated system." Not only did liquor distributors continue selling their products, they also found a way to avoid paying the excise tax. 

The firm of Knowles, Taylor & Knowles Company began operations in 1870, when Isaac Knowles, Colonel John N. Taylor (Isaac’s son-in-law), and Isaac's son Homer formed a partnership.. By the early 1890s, the firm had mastered the making of bone china called Lotus Ware. 

The china whiskey jugs produced by the firm were bulbous and tapered to a slender neck, decorated with gold trimming. The top of the applied handle, also decorated with gold, had the look of a serpents head, a novel way for the jug to stand out from other whiskey jugs.

The mass-produced jugs came in several colors with transfer designs. Green seemed to be the most widely used color, but sometimes the same style jug appeared in red, blue, and brown.

Jugs also came in different sizes, the most common being the quart size, but there were also pints and half pints. Most jugs had one handle but some had two.

The sharp and artistic transfer designs on the jugs showed off the talent of the artists and the innovative ideas of the firm. The fancy lettering on the jugs may have inspired collectors to keep the jugs as decorative pieces, instead of discarding them as just another container.

George W. Meredith of East Liverpool, Ohio, a former employee of Knowles, Taylor & Knowles Company, fast became a leader in the distribution of his product called "Diamond Club Pure Rye Whiskey." At his peak, he distributed his whiskey from coast to coast. Meredith, who was always looking for new ways to sell his whiskey, and his association with the firm of Knowles,Taylor & Knowles Company, probably had a lot to do with the production of the unique china whiskey jug.

An aggressive advertiser of his "Diamond Club Pure Rye Whiskey ," Meredith was the only distributor known to use the pint and half-pint containers. He also had a 154-inch size, known at the time as a "watch fob." Though it didn’t contain any whiskey, it was a consistent reminder to its possessor of the G.M. Meredith Company.

During this same period, American liquor distributors were also looking for ways to sell  their products, and on special occasions, to provide a gift to their best customers. The fancy liquor containers, inexpensive to purchase, were the perfect solution. The Irish, British and Scottish distributors of the same era had been using fancy jugs to promote their whiskey and had been very successful in thwarting thefts.

Knowles, Taylor & Knowles Co. also produced hand-painted china whiskey jugs. Companies or individuals not in the liquor business purchased these jugs for special occasions. The hand-painted jugs were interesting in themselves, as they showed the Victorian influence. Some had Victorian ladies painted on them surrounded by silver overlay. The scenes often depict flowers, from single roses to bunches of flowers with leaves and stems.

Though Knowles, Taylor & Knowles made jugs with transfer designs, their hand-painted jugs aren’t as easily recognized. The firm didn’t mark its jugs, whether hand-painted or not, any differently. During the Victorian era and into the 20th century, it was popular to buy undecorated items and paint them for business or gifts. Often a professional artists decorated the piece, so the decoration itself cannot offer a clue as to whether or not a piece had been decorated at the factory. Also, most of the factory pieces weren’t signed because the artist worked by the piece and too much time would have been wasted by signing and dating items. However, amateur artists did like to sign their pieces. Most hand-painted items found today that are signed and dated probably fall into that category.

Knowles, Taylor & Knowles produced their china whiskey jugs from 1891 to the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, when bankruptcy forced the company to close.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "folk art" in the 2023 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Fall is Cranberry Season

QUESTION: Every year at Thanksgiving, I bring out a set of eight sparkling pink glasses that used to be belong to my great-grandmother. They seem so festive and add a holiday note to our dining table. Can you tell me anything about these glasses?

ANSWER: Your glasses are made of cranberry glass, a very special type of glass favored by Victorian hostesses, especially around the holidays. Not only is this glass appropriate for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, but it’s also a popular collectible. In fact, some pieces are worth too much to be used for fear of breakage.

Although glassblowers had been making colored glass since ancient Egypt, it was Johann Kunckel, a 17th-century German chemist from Potsdam, who came up with the red color by adding gold chloride to the clear crystal. During the 19th century, English and American glassblowers experimented with adding less gold choride, resulting in a pink glass which the Americans called “cranberry.”

And thanks to the virtuosity of these glassblowers there seems to be an endless variety of shapes and patterns of this glass on the market. In addition to tumblers and water pitchers, there are salt cellars, sugar shakers, cruets, jars, jugs, decanters, celery vases and finger bowls. Among the widely used patterns are "Swirl," "Coin Dot," and "Daisy & Fern." Some of the most rare and expensive items found from this time period are beautiful lamps and other lighting fixtures.
         
As with any collectible, cranberry glass can also be an investment. Pieces that sold for less than ten dollars a generation ago are now worth hundreds of dollars. Because of the natural fragility of glass, antique cranberry glass has become relatively scarce, though it does turn up in thrift and antique shops,  flea markets, and auctions.         

Although cranberry glass had peaked in popularity by the end of the 19th century, manufacturers produced it in quantity through the 1930s. The last two companies to make this unique glass—The Pilgrim Glass Corporation and Fenton Art Glass —went out of business early this century. Pilgrim Glass Company produced beautiful blown cranberry glass ranging from various vases and baskets to candle holders and sold them in department stores and gift shops around the country until 2001. At the time if the company's closing, cranberry was its most popular type of glass. Fenton Art Glass marketed new cranberry glass, featuring opalescent decoration with coin dots, daisy patterns and numerous other styles, through retailers around the country until it closed in 2011.

Cranberry glass has always been made in craft production rather than in large quantities, due to the high cost of the gold and the delicate mixing process required. Glassmakers dissolve the gold chloride in a solution of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, known as “aqua regia.” Gold in the batch reacts with intense heat to create the beautiful cranberry color. A glassworker called a “caser” attaches a “bud” of this glass mixture to a blowpipe. Then the glassblower stands on a platform with the mold below his feet and blows the molten glass into the mold to create the desired shape. Afterwards, another glassworker places the piece in a “lehr” or annealing oven where it slowly cools to room temperature. Most cranberry pieces are hand blown or molded and often contain small bubbles and striations.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Article section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 24,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about antique clocks in the Fall 2019 Edition, "It's That Time Again," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques & More Collection on Facebook.

That's a Crock!

QUESTION: Some time ago I purchased an old crock at an antique show in my area. I believe it holds two gallons and has two hearts and the number “2" painted in blue on the front. The name Sarah Good is incised above the hearts. Can you tell me how old this crock is and what is the significance of the heart design?

ANSWER: Heart decoration was somewhat rare among crocks. Though your crock has a name incised in it isn’t unusual,  that the name is female is. This indicates that this crock may have been a wedding gift, specially made for Sarah Good. After all, a crock in the early to mid-19th century was a piece of kitchen equipment much as a set of canisters is today.

Potters made crocks of American stoneware, which they covered in an alkaline or salt glaze and often decorated using cobalt oxide to produce bright blue designs. Though people often use the term "crock" to describe this type of pottery, the word "crock" wasn’t used at the time these vessels were popular.

Stoneware is a type of pottery that’s  fired to about 1200°C to 1315°C. While it originated in the Rhineland area of Germany in the 15tth century, it became the dominant piece of houseware in America between 1780 and 1890. People relied on American Stoneware as not only a durable, decorative piece of houseware but as a safer alternative to lead-glazed earthenware. The invention of refrigeration caused its decline.

Americans began producing salt-glazed stoneware circa 1720 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Yorktown, Virginia. By the 1770s, the art of salt-glazed stoneware production had spread to many centers throughout the United States, most notably Manhattan, New York. The Remmey and Crolius families of potters would, by the turn of the 19th century, set the standard for expertly crafted and beautiful stoneware. By 1820, potters in nearly every American city produced stoneware, with those from Baltimore, Maryland, standing out for their excellent craftsmanship.

While salt-glazing is the typical glaze technique seen on American Stoneware, potters employed other glazing methods. They often dipped vessels in Albany Slip, a mixture made from a clay peculiar to the Upper Hudson Region of New York, and when fired, produced a dark brown glaze. They sometimes used this slip as a glaze to coat the inside surface of salt-glazed ware.

While decorated ware was usually adorned using cobalt oxide, American Stoneware potters used other decorative techniques. Incising, a method in which a design of flowering plants, birds, or some other decoration was cut into the leather-hard clay using a stylus, produced detailed, recessed images on the vessels. Potters usually highlighted these in cobalt. They also impressed designs into the leather-hard clay using wooden stamps. Potters occasionally substituted manganese or iron oxide for cobalt oxide to produce brown, instead of blue, decorations on their pieces.

In the last half of the 19th century, potters in New England and New York state began producing stoneware with elaborate figural designs such as deer, dogs, birds, houses, people, historical scenes and other fanciful motifs including elephants and "bathing beauties."

Most stoneware jugs had some sort of decoration on them which covered only a small area. Unlike other pottery, they weren’t decorated all over. Birds and flowers were commonly painted using cobalt-oxide glaze or incised into the surface with a stylus.

More elaborate designs featured chickens standing by a water trough or sprigs of greenery artfully handpainted with cobalt slip. Sometimes the location of the potter appeared on the side of the jar or on its base.

A crock’s decoration can often be a clue to where it was made. A two-gallon jug with a cobalt design of a sailing ship with flag atop the middle of three fasts, a light-house to the right and a group of rocks to te left, indicates that it most likely came from New England.

Potters signed a good bit of their work using their maker’s mark or sometimes incised their signatures in the surface of the jar. Many pieces can be attributed to particular makers based on the cobalt decoration, clay body, form, and such. They marked the gallon capacity of the vessels using numeral stamps or incised or cobalt oxide numbers or hash marks applied freehand.

For the last several years, stoneware prices have been climbing ever higher, especially for the high-end wares. Most stoneware crocks sell for four to six figures, depending on their maker and condition.

Collectors continue to pay premium prices for stoneware decorated with elaborate and unique motifs. Attributed to David Parr Sr. of Baltimore, a circa-1830 six-gallon jar with a cobalt design of a flower basket that covered the entire front of the vessel sold for $13,750 at auction. The back of the jar featured a flowering plant rising' from a mound of earth. The vessel had rim and base chips, as well as several cracks and still sold for a high amount.

The same auction contained a one-gallon stoneware jug showing a house, tree and fence which sold for $10,175. Stamped J. & E. Norton/Bennington, Vermont, buyers liked this circa-1855 jug not only for its cobalt decoration, but also for its small size. Salt-glazed pieces sell for especially high prices. A salt-glazed water cooler brought $10,500 at auction.