Need help with early bottle

[earlyglasscollector]

Sorry, it's not a mallet. A mallet would be anything between 1720-1760 and needs a wide body not much taller than the neck length. The term mallet comes from the stonemason's and early woodcarver's mallets which are a distinctive shape, with a generally tapering body side as well. This term is frequently mistakenly used for any vaguely cylindrical bottle.What you have is a Dutch or Belgian "ladies leg" long necked wine c1760-1780. They seem to have been used for a variety of wines but Constantia wine was a particular favourite, from South Africa (Dutch colony). A very few are sealed. usually two sizes, yours is the full size. The necks can be exageratedly bulged in the middle, particularly the earler ones, the later ones tended to have more cylindrical necks without the bulge. Value usually a little under $100 for good condition, but morefor a good bulge! www.earlyglass.com

 

[Samnewhampshire]

Earlyglasscollector, thanks so much for your helpful post. That's just what I was looking for

 

[earlyglasscollector]

Image of a traditional stonemason's mallet, showing the general proportions and some of the characteristics necessary for a mallet bottle...

Hope that helps.While I'm here, I was looking through M&K's "bible" (American Bottles & Flasks and their ancestry) the other day and noticed a major, major mistake.....!!!!!!!! I'm sure they haven't realised themselves...but it must be creating all sorts of problems for you guys attributing age and terminology to your bottles, but in the very important page 207 illustrating the so called "evolutionary" development of the black glass wine bottle they (or rather I guess the printers) have got the illustrations for type 3 and type 4 THE WRONG WAY ROUND!!!! ...take a look and you'll see what I mean....www.earlyglass.com

 

[cowseatmaize]

"I'm sure they haven't realised themselves"That's a problem when being a 50 or 100 year old publication and not updating your work. You can't simply rely on old info to be correct anymore.Unfortunately, most of the recent books still do just that.

 

[earlyglasscollector]

Yes that's so true Eric. One of my other pet subjects is the referring of the well known Cologne water phials, the very long very slim bottles with long necks, some quite early- c1700, right up to c1840 molded, as being "WINE TASTERS" aaaarrrrrgh!!!!! particularly by US collectors who don't know, and I guess are only being told what they have been told etc, and it all goes back to some antique glass book back in 19something which did not know what they were, but made a quite feasable assumption that they might be for lowering through the bung hole of barrels etc to pick up a sample of the wine...etc etc. There is some logic to that, but these bottles are so well documented over here and certainly obviously in Germany and with German collectors, that this really shouldn't be happening any more. www.earlyglass.com

 

[cowseatmaize]

Yup Mark, I have many books from as late as the 70's that call them "wine testers or tasters". There are too many labeled colognes to say it's at all true.