A major and comprehensive book on the history and evolution of antique glass bottles between 1500 and 1850. Lavishly illustrated with new specially commissioned colour photography, it also includes the most comprehensive worldwide bibliography on glass bo

Chronicles the last half century's haphazard attempt to harness fusion energy, describing how governments and research teams throughout the world have employed measures ranging from the controversial to the humorous.

Originally meant to trap bad spirits, bottle trees arrived in the U.S. with the African slave trade and first took root in the South. Now it's a popular art form, a national phenomenon that's showing up at garden shows, craft fairs and farmers markets. Garden writer and photographer Felder Rushing has encountered thousands of bottle trees and other glass garden art in his travels across America and around the world. In BOTTLE TREES he presents 60 of his favorites, from the backyards of Mississippi to the Chelsea Flower Show to the glass fantasies of Dale Chihuly. With humor and affection he tells the stories behind the photographs: the history and lore of bottle trees and glass sculpture, and the inspired people who make them.

Originally printed in 1987, is designed for the cultural historian, archaeologist, the bottle collector, and those just interested in pharmacopoeia. This book is a guide to the identification of the embossed, patent and proprietary medicine bottles produced in an era of American history when anything could be bottled, advertised and sold - legally. A cornucopia of cures, bitters, tonics, and balms, many of them little more and slightly disguised alcohol, were available to the gullible but willing public. Not only are the embossed and shapely bottles of this era highly collectable today, they are also valuable to archaeologists who interpret and date historical sites. This book has been designed as a reference book. It provided detailed descriptions to aid the researcher in identifying and evaluating whole or fragmented vessels. A discussion of the patent and proprietary medicine years, and the innovations applied to the production of glass, is followed by a brief interpretation of bottles by color, design and shape. Over 40 chapters detail nearly four thousand medicine bottles. Numerous line drawings, and color photographs will aid the researcher/collector/anthropologist in the identification process. Richard Fike, is a retired Bureau of Land Management Archaeologist. Rich is also an historian, writer, teacher and the developer of the Museum of the Mountain West of Montrose, Colorado. He continues to expand the Museum, which contains original and recreated historic buildings that house extensive collections of America's past. He has combined his professional knowledge and his personal interest in historic bottles to provide this authoritative, definitive, and entertaining guide.

The rivetingly strange story of the world's most expensive bottle of wine, and the even stranger characters whose lives have intersected with it. The New York Times bestseller, updated with a new epilogue, that tells the true story of a 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux—supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson—that sold for $156,000 at auction and of the eccentrics whose lives intersected with it. Was it truly entombed in a Paris cellar for two hundred years? Or did it come from a secret Nazi bunker? Or from the moldy basement of a devilishly brilliant con artist? As Benjamin Wallace unravels the mystery, we meet a gallery of intriguing players—from the bicycle-riding British auctioneer who speaks of wines as if they are women to the obsessive wine collector who discovered the bottle. Suspenseful and thrillingly strange, this is the vintage tale of what could be the most elaborate con since the Hitler diaries. “Part detective story, part wine history, this is one juicy tale, even for those with no interest in the fruit of the vine. . . . As delicious as a true vintage Lafite.” —BusinessWeek

The contour Coca-Cola bottle is the most recognized package created by man. It has been called an international icon and one of the most significant artifacts of the twentieth century. Of everything that has been written about The Coca-Cola Company, the one error of omission has been the complete and accurate story about the creation of its famous contour bottle and the impact it has made in the world. Knowing his entire life that it was his father, Earl R. Dean, who designed the bottle, it became the author's mission to get the story told before the truth was forever lost-to set the record straight-not only for his father and his descendants, but for the millions of people all over the world who have enjoyed a romance with his bottle.