Shipwreck-Recovered English Antique Black Glass Cylinder Bottle with Marine Concretion, c.1840

A remarkable and sculptural survivor of the age of sail: an English black glass cylinder bottle of mid-19th-century date, recovered from the seabed off the Cornish coast and left entirely as the sea returned it — the greater part of its body encased in a thick accretion of calcareous marine growth.

Bottles of this form were the workhorses of the Victorian wine and beer trade. Mould-blown in so-called "black" glass — in truth a very dark glass rendered near-opaque by iron oxide in the batch — the cylinder had by the 1840s become the standard form for binning and shipping, its parallel sides allowing bottles to be stacked horizontally in cellars and in the holds of merchant vessels. The applied double-collar lip, clearly visible at the unencrusted neck, is entirely characteristic of the period.

It is the condition of the piece, however, that lends it such extraordinary presence. Decades of submersion have built up a dense, undisturbed mass of marine concretion — the accumulated work of barnacles, tube worms, and encrusting organisms — which envelops the shoulder and body, broken only where windows of glossy black glass show through. Traces of coralline growth survive within the accretion. The neck and lip rise clean and dark above the encrusted mass, and the bottle remains structurally sound beneath.

Nothing has been cleaned, picked, or stabilised: the object is presented precisely as recovered, a small monument to the hundreds of vessels claimed by the treacherous waters off Cornwall during the 19th century. Wreck-recovered glass in this untouched state is increasingly difficult to find, most examples having been stripped of their concretion for the sake of the bottle beneath.

A piece of singular sculptural character — equally suited to a collection of marine antiquities, early glass, or a cabinet of curiosities.

Provenance: England. 19th-century, circa 1840.

Material: Glass.

Condition: Glass sound and intact. Heavy marine encrustation to the body and shoulder as found, with losses and rubbing to the concretion in places exposing the glass beneath. Entirely unrestored and uncleaned.

Dimensions: Height approx 28.5 cm (11 1/4 inches)