A very quick one tonight, I've been having
a 'bit of a week', boiler wise! Among the items I've inherited are two ships,
in bottles, these are they . . .
This was from a Perrier Water promotion in the 1970's, a friend of Mum's (also our friend
Guy's mum!) was a promoter who used to go round supermarkets or department stores demonstrating
things and giving out free samples (Mum did too; a while later - I became
addicted to mini frozen jam-doughnuts at one point!), and as well as the bottles
of free Perrier, there were plastic
key-ring bottles (which I should have somewhere, but can't remember seeing it
for years?), and reward bonuses, and I think this was one of those.
Google and feebleBay reveal other Perrier ships in bottles, but they must
have been different promotions or regions, as I only remember Janet having a
few of these for her team. The ship - Loch Torridon, a four-masted
barque/clipper-ship; one of the last) is fascinating, although it's history
varies on the internet, some thinking it Norwegian when it foundered, some
Russian, Wiki's probably best for a primer!
I've also seen this exact model in a
different bottle, for a whiskey company's similar promotion, so the model must
have been commissioned from a commercial ship-in-bottle modelling company!
This is more of a tourist memento/keepsake,
and a fine example of blown-glasswork it is, one sail has fallen off, but
finding someone with the skill to mend it is going to take a few phone-calls,
as while there are craft glass-works about the place, there can't be many who
can do key-hole surgery with long molten rods through the end of a bottle!
It's a more fanciful model of a more
medieval type I think? That's it - two ships in bottles!
With some of these more modern ships in bottles, you find the base has been cut off and reattached- not sure if its the case here. I find newer boats have a plasticene sea, older ones use plaster.
ReplyDeleteHa-ha! No Andy, that's cheating! You do see them in charity shops sometimes, but I wouldn't blog them (except maybe if I ended-up with a box-full!) as they have no 'craft', these are both trad'! The Perrier is pulled-up by the cable linking the masts, and the glass one seems to have been built-up in-situ, with hot rods, hence the bind finding someone who can fuse that sail back on (which is right at the back!), thankfully it was a simple weak-join and fall to the bottom without shattering any rigging lines, or breaking itself! But made from hot glass would leave it tempered?
ReplyDeleteH
And yes, you're right about the plasticicne . . . same colour (a nice sea green-blue) on the Whiskey version which is why I'm attributing them to a third-party, unknown, commercial maker!
ReplyDeleteH
Might not be commercial- we have a ship in a bottle made by a local fisherman, and it has a plasticene sea.
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