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silver-gilt casting bottle

Description
The pear-shaped bottle of oval section rests on a plain, conical stem and a spreading foot embossed with a band of foliage on matted ground. The lower part of the body is embossed with fluting and a band of bosses on matted ground above. The upper body is embossed with two sprays of foliage on punched matted ground. At each side is an applied vertical band surmounted by a dragon supporting the pendant chain. The neck is stamped with a band of trelliswork above an applied reeded band. The domed screw-on cover, similarly embossed with foliage, is pierced and terminates in a baluster finial.

Construction
The foot is made in two raised sections, with a strengthening ring soldered to the rim. The body is apparently constructed of two identical raised sections soldered together beneath the applied vertical bands. The threaded neck is made separately. The cover has four distinct components: the screw thread, underside, raised upper side, and cast finial.

Commentary
The function of the casting bottle was to hold rose water or other scented liquid that would then be sprinkled on the hands, or elsewhere, through the perforations in its lid.

Sixteenth-century silver casting bottles are of two distinct types: a pear-shaped form of oval section fitted with a suspension chain, and a vase-shaped variety, generally of circular section and without a chain. The Gilbert Collection bottle is of the first type, represented by only four known surviving examples, of which this is the least altered or damaged.

The surviving bottle most closely resembling the Gilbert Collection piece is the Victoria and Albert Museum's example of 1563. It appears to be constructed in the same way, has a similar cover, similar stamped ornament around the neck, and identical dragon supports for its missing chain. But it is decorated with the strapwork fashionable at the time, whereas the chasing on this bottle is of an early Renaissance type that went out of fashion around the middle of the century and is found on very little extant plate. As such, the bottle is a valuable digest of a number of contemporary visual sources.

As with most categories of sixteenth-century plate, inventories of the period show that casting bottles were in use long before the date of the earliest surviving examples. The records of the Royal jewel House suggest that they were a fashionable type of gift during the reign of Henry VIII (r.1509-48): the 1521 Royal Jewel Book, for example, contains references to two bottles, each weighing six and a half ounces, which were given to the king by Sir John Hussey, while in 1523 the earl of Kent gave him "a little bottell with a cheyne of silver and gilte for rose water" weighing eleven ounces.

Much of this information was provided by Philippa Glanville.

Glossaries

emboss - mould or carve in relief, decorate with a raised design
fluting - a series of concave, parallel grooves running vertically, derived from the decoration of columns in classical architecture
reeding - thin, parallel, convex mouldings, often used for the ornamentation of a border
baluster finial - a short column, generally circular in section and with an undulating profile
raised - formed from a single sheet of metal by repeated hammering over an anvil

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