Working with two masters students, Nicholas Major and Elizabeth Adams, we have been creating a catalogue of glass bottle seals dated to the mid- 17th 19th-century using the collection curated by the Museum of London Archaeological Archive. The results of our work can be explored on the Culture Embossed website.
From hundreds of boxes of material spanning 40 years of excavations, we have ‘rediscovered’ 82 seals. We think this is the largest archaeological collection in the UK.
English glasshouses have been making bottles since the mid-17th century (for example the distinctive ‘shaft and globe’ bottle), these containers provided a perfect surface for individuals to commission their own specially designed seals. This practice continued well into the mid-to-late 19th century. But who are the names behind them? And why were they made?
If you were a landlord or landlady during this period it would have been important to have your glass bottles marked to prove ownership. Adding a seal to a bottle provided one such mechanism, and so they would always be marked with the sign of the premises and (usually) a name.
