Monday, October 24, 2011

Unusual Artifacts: A Silver Bottle Ticket, 1840



Items such as this are actually quite fashionable again today. Here, we see a bottle ticket with the word CLARET in pierced lettering. Made to be suspended from a bottle or decanter to identify its contents, this ticket is made of silver decorated with a vine leaf with branch above. A silver chain is attached.

Gazettes of the era began to refer to "labels for bottles" in the 1770s and by the 1790s, these tickets were made for specific wines and spirits.

Silver bottle tickets tended to reflect fashionable designs and allowed metal workers to showcase their skills, often in miniature.

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