Reviews

Robin Butler’s impressive new publication contains sizeable, well-illustrated sections to interest furniture historians and collectors on such things as wine coolers, coasters, drinking tables and other miscellanea. In the latter section there is one particular intriguing item on which members of this Society might just be able to throw some light. I refer to the pair of mahogany crutches illustrated (fig. 12/5), good quality pieces of around 1815-30. They have heavy, lead-weighted bases which are hemi-spherical in form, so as to return to an upright position if knocked over. They are the height of a chair arm and were supposedly used to assist a seated person from sliding underneath a drinking table when imbibing heavily: seemingly a very English pursuit of the time!

At least three similar pairs are known, which seem to be connected with a gentleman’s club in or near Wakefield in Yorkshire, but any further information has so far eluded research. Their existence first came to light in correspondence in Country Life in the mid 1950’s.

In the first important book on the wider world of wine for more than two decades, the antiques dealer Robin Butler examines the panoply of objects that enhance its enjoyment, from ceramics and furniture to glass and metal.

Butler joined his family antiques business in 1963 but his interest in wine accessories started in 1976 when he was asked to assemble a collection of historic pieces for an exhibition to celebrate the diamond jubilee of the British Antique Dealers’ Association.

Anyone who has wondered how to know a helix (spiral part of a corkscrew) from a hogget (rounded-end decanter that cannot be put down) or a cellaret from a cistern should find the answer here. It is a beautiful, intriguing and practical book that plots the history of wine paraphernalia over almost four centuries, during which time Britain has been established as the epicentre of the wine trade.

Since the only museum with a big collection of wine accessories (Harveys in Bristol) was closed in 2002, this book fills a valuable illustrative gap with more than 700 colour images. As an example, plain undecorated decanters — often most favoured by wine enthusiasts — are depicted only pages away from those with wonderful cut decoration that allows refracted light to glisten through the wine.

Butler sets each accessory in its context. He considers why 18th-century wine glasses were so small compared with modern ones. It was not because people imbibed less. During the Georgian era, glasses were not placed on the table but kept by servants on a side table, which later became the sideboard. During dinner, drinking wine was restricted to occasions when a toast was proposed. A footman would then bring a fully charged glass to each diner and the contents taken in a single draught. Hence the smaller size.

The horseshoe table placed near the fire was developed to place wine after dinner. Such bottles would be placed in a trolley or double coaster that would circulate between gentlemen.

The bottle or decanter slide or stand, as coasters were known pre-1898, became popular in the 1760s to protect the decanter and stop wine dribbles staining. The art of the silversmith, notably in the Rococo fashion, yielded wonderfully stylised vine foliage, while the development of wooden, pewter, horn, glass, leather and even papier-mâché for coasters is often forgotten.

For practicality, the wine funnel makes an ideal but neglected item. While silver ones are well known, although rarely found pre-1700, ceramic examples can be enchanting. Worcester made polychrome funnels with Chinese decoration in the mid-1750s. Butler has also found glass ones.

The Single Bottle Act of 1861 allowed the sale of individual bottles and, as a result, the introduction of printed wine labels. Before then, bin labels revealed a wine’s origin. Many were generic (claret, sherry) but some stated the estate name (such as Lafite 1848). The earliest were made of lead with white-painted letters against metal, but this changed to tin-glazed earthenware by the mid to late 18th century.

Wine labels were first used in the 1730s after the horizontal binning of bottles. Today some of the names seem unusual, like Mountain (hinterland of Málaga, which was a source of sweet wine for Nelson’s fleet), Neece (presumably a phonetic spelling of Nice) and Bushby (whose origin is still unknown). Formerly called bottle tickets, usually in silver, many attest to the popularity of Portuguese wine, such as Bucellas and Lisbon. Misspelling was not unusual ("champaigne").

For the collector, the section on fakes and forgeries should be required reading before buying. A silver label for Madeira, the most commonly found, may be "improved" by filling the engraved name with silver solder and re-engraving it with a more collectable name. It can be detected by breathing heavily on a cold label: the solder will appear lighter than its surroundings but detection is more difficult if it has been electroplated.

Book reviews come in many shapes and sizes. Sometimes they are essays on the subject of the book, more, or perhaps less, informative on the actual quality of the work in question. Others tell you, in some detail, what is actually in the book, but give little idea of the reviewer’s actual opinions. Others again go to town on the minutiae that may have escaped the eagle eye of the editor or proof-reader. I would certainly not be the right person on this last aspect!

What I can report is that Robin Butler’s new book displays impeccable scholarship combined with outstanding book production. Brown & Brown and their printers BPS, both in Suffolk, England deserve the highest praise. The illustrations—all compiled and researched by the author and all in color—are of the highest quality and perfectly complement the text. Yet the book remains comfortable to handle despite the heavy paper required to ensure the quality of the picture reproduction. This is achieved by using soft covers but protecting the book in a box—a very practical solution, since the book is far heavier than its 288 pages would lead you to suspect.

Apart from chapters on the obvious things—bottles, corkscrews, decanters, and glasses—there are very informative chapters on more esoteric items such as bin labels, tasters, wine coolers, wine funnels, wine labels, coasters, and decanter trolleys, as well as a salutary warning about fakes. Some of the most beautiful furniture ever designed were specialist tables at which to take wine, where decanters might circulate, sometimes on brass rails.

There is also much fascinating social history. Thus, the small glasses produced in the 17th and early 18th centuries were for drinking wine but more especially for making toasts and, as with presentday Scandinavians and their toasts in aquavit, the glass had to be drained in one gulp. It was only after numerous such toasts and the end of the meal that serious wine drinking began, using larger glasses. (As an echo of such customs, Oxbridge High Tables still reserve their serious wines for drinking at leisure after dining in Hall). While decanters are still as useful as ever, as well as a joy to behold, modern glasses are greatly to be preferred to their 18th or 19th century predecessors which are better enjoyed with the eye. If you have ever wondered how the bladder-shaped bottles made prior to 1730 could have been binned, the answer is in sand. Only when bottles became more or less straight-sided could they be stored in the large, brick bins still to be found in the cellars of old country houses. One thing surprised me—I had never heard that the indentation under the bottom of a bottle could be called a “kick” rather than a punt; a term apparently reserved to those in the wine trade. The silversmith’s art comes into its own with wine labels used for indicating the contents of decanters as well as for coasters. Some beautiful examples are illustrated here.

But perhaps nothing else quite has the immediacy, when it comes to evoking the past, as the wine bottles embossed with a date, and with the name or initials of the happy owner for whom they were made. Few examples dated prior to 1700 survive, and the invention of the bottle mold in 1821 sounded the death knell of the hand-blown bottle, but also ushered in standard bottle sizes.

I have only scratched the surface of what is contained within the covers of this fascinating book. It is a joy to handle; it illustrates the subject with erudition and charm, and is a pleasure to thumb through. The sort of book one hopes to receive as a present for Christmas or a birthday but, in the end, a book you must have if the subject is of any interest at all!

Wading through the flood of wine books that washed up on my doorstep this year was as dispiriting as the weather. Thankfully, there are a handful that I would be happy to give and receive.

First up is the quirky, witty and lavish history of wine paraphernalia entitled Great British Wine Accessories 1550-1900 by the wine antique specialist Robin Butler. This costly boxed book will make an indulgent present for aficionados.

Within lie centuries of ingenious gizmos devised by wine-obsessed Brits. Clock the rare George Hepplewhite horseshoe-shaped, fire-hugging 1793 drinking tables, complete with decanter shields, allowing drinkers to toast their feet but not their wine. Britain’s earliest extant decanter is a 1644 silver and leather affair encouragingly engraved “Helpe youre selfe” above Lord Ogilvy of Banff’s coat of arms. How wonderful, too, that the first British tastevin, a heavy silver taster, c 1570, was dredged from the Thames near Vintners’ Hall at Vintry Wharf in the City of London.

It is rumoured in some quarters that 2009 will be the greatest vintage in Burgundy since 1949. Others say that such a pronouncement is a little premature. Whatever the final accolade awarded to it, it will certainly be a seriously good wine. A product gleaned from skilful use and application of all the resources available. And so it is with Robin Butler’s latest book Great British Wine Accessories, published by Brown & Brown. A mouth-watering masterpiece visually and textually, this is vintage Butler and has to be counted as the definitive book on the subject. There is nothing approaching its comprehensive content - from which I could not call to mind any omission - which is sensibly laid out for easy reference, and it reads as if the author is talking, engaging you in his enthusiasm and deep understanding of the social, economic, material and manufacturing background of everything to do with the storage, serving and consumption of wine.

I thought that Robin Butler’s previous book, The Book of Wine Antiques, which he co-authored with Gillian Walkling in 1986, was excellent, sufficiently good enough for me to buy two copies, one each - eventually - for our two sons, and it remains a significant and reliable reference work. But Great British Wine Accessories is in a different league. Immense thought and care has gone into its presentation. For example although it measures 30 x 22cm it comes as a soft cover packed in a hardback presentation case. This means it is effortless to flick through without breaking the spine and the pages are easy to see in their entirety yet it is well protected when not in use. The publishers have gone to great lengths to create an almost three-dimensional look to many of the illustrations, of which there are some 700 +, and the layout of them runs nicely with the text and the captions are informative in themselves.

This is a book that will give pleasure and information to the connoisseur and novice enthusiast alike, as well as the many who just like to know how we led our lives in days gone by. I mentioned earlier the appeal of Robin Butler’s writing. He describes a pair of table crutches that were made for each member of a drinking club somewhere near Wakefield in the 1820’s. Their purpose was to prop up a chap when he was drinking so that he neither fell forward onto the table or indeed under it when drunk but sufficiently conscious to keep drinking. There’s luxury for you. Robin sums up "This must surely epitomise the absurd lengths to which English Gentlemen were prepared to go in suffering for their love of wine." In my opinion Great British Wine Accessories is the wine antiques collectors’ equivalent of The Dictionary of English Furniture, and as such I suppose I shall have to get two copies of this as well.

In 1986, in the heyday of his appearances in antiques related programmes on television, Robin Butler wrote The Book of Wine Antiques. That book became the standard book on the subject. Twenty-three years of continuing research and additions to his picture library has enabled Robin to do what every writer dreams of: to produce a book even bigger, better and more comprehensive than the original.

The British have always been enthusiastic consumers of wine, and the ritualistic way it is drunk in the company of friends has ensured that all the requisites involved have to be fashionable and up-to-date. Only the bottle itself, forbidden on the table of polite society until towards the end of the nineteenth century, changed its form according to changes in technology rather than aesthetics.

The first two chapters are devoted to bottles and bin labels, more familiar to the butler of a large house than to its owner. Early free-blown bottles are now highly collectable with one selling in 2008 for about £24,000. There a dozens of clubs throughout the world devoted to the bottle and a quote from the bottle section of this book encapsulates the author’s thoughts: The mind-set behind collectors of wine glasses, labels, or bottles are all different from one another and certainly from the rest of mankind, but they exist and they determine the prices to a greater or lesser extent. They each have criteria, which in their own chosen world is important to them, and this is expressed in the prices they are prepared to pay.

In the world before the screw top the drinker had to struggle with a corkscrew to extract the cork, and hundreds of inventors patented new devices which in their eyes made this extraction easier, and new devices continue to come on the market up to the present day. This reviewer now prefers to use the simple ‘waiter friend’ having tried many different types over the years, but Robin illustrates 89 (!) examples from the simple to screws decorated with gold and agate. Again there is a plethora of societies devoted to the corkscrew, some with rather quaint names such as the ICCA (The international Correspondence of Corkscrew Addicts).

Wine tasters make for a short chapter as they were mainly for professional wine merchants rather than customers and the book then moves on to Wine Coolers, Cellarets and Cisterns. These are all rather grand objects, unlikely to be found in a modest villa. Wine coolers are made occasionally in gold, often in silver, sometimes in base metal and less commonly, in ceramics or glass. Coopered brass bound-mahogany table wine coolers and floor standing cellarets for cooling multiple bottles satisfied the aristocratic owners of castles, country houses and grand London properties.

Decanters and jugs placed directly on a polished mahogany table can scratch it, and wine drips can stain it, so decanter stands, or coasters, were used to protect the table. Trolleys, coasters on wheels, were used to pass the port. Many believe that these were first used by the Duke of Wellington to avoid the embarrassment of asking the Prince Regent to slide a coaster, as the trolley could be rolled in front of him; although Robin does not mention which he probably does not believe. Coasters were made in all materials, metal, precious and base, wood, lacquer, ceramics and glass and can be the most elaborate of all wine-related accoutrements.

Wine funnels have their collectors, they are usually in silver but also exist in enamelware, glass and porcelain. The same is true of wine labels. The author illustrates a collection of over 300 labels together detailed descriptions of a further 87 labels, one even made from tigers’ claws. Also described are wine siphons, silver-mounted corks and pouring aids.

Unlike the author, this reviewer has left decanters and glasses to the end. As mentioned above brown wine bottles were forbidden on the table so decanters or carafes, (stopperless vessels), were used. They also have the advantage of aerating the wine, often improving the taste. These started in the same form as a bottle but in clear glass, but the form progressed, independent of the bottle, and Robin illustrates around 70 examples. The grander cousin of the decanter is the ‘wine’ or ‘claret’ jug. These always had handles and could be made in silver, pottery, particularly the early ones, and glass, these could truly be objects de luxe to grace the sumptuous tables of the rich. Towards the end of the 19th century some jugs became quite zoomorphic, with parrots and ducks being the favourite form.

As collecting wine glasses has been covered so well in specialist books on this subject, Robin illustrates only around 70 examples, together will a discussion as to why their shapes and sizes changed with different drinking customs. It is hard for us today to comprehend the importance of toasting in social drinking.

Robin has only considered the civilised side of drinking. There is neither gin nor drunkenness to be found here. This book is recommended for the Christmas stocking of every wine lover in the country.

Robin Butler’s enthusiasm for wine and wine accessories was first brought to our attention in 1986 when he co-wrote The Book of Wine Antiques with Gillian Walkling. This book helped pave the way for a much more structured, user-friendly and well-illustrated book entitled Great British Wine Accessories 1550-1900. One of the great joys of wine-related accessories is that the subject crosses so many different areas of study and in this book subjects such as corkscrews, bottles, wine funnels and coasters to just name a few are covered in mouth-watering detail. The strength of this book is that it is an illustrated overview of the whole spectrum of wine antiques. The book will appeal to experts and collectors alike and each chapter reveals nuggets of new information that will make it an ideal Christmas stocking present. For beginners and lovers of wine there is an excellent glossary of terms used when describing accessories and a very useful bibliography which has been well researched. This book fills a much needed gap in our understanding of the range of wine-related items and is a tour de force.

Robin Butler's Great British Wine Accessories 1550-1900 is a coffee-table book providing a witty and unusual exploration of the history of Britain's wine paraphernalia. Inside this delightful book we learn about the history of corkscrews, claret jugs and wine labels. Some of the more bizarre and entertaining inventions include a pair of ornate crutches designed for a heavy drinking club in Yorkshire in order to prevent the drinker sliding beneath the table or lurching forward onto it. In Butler's description, it epitomises the "absurd lengths to which English gentlemen were prepared to go in suffering for their love of wine".