Moth Bottles

I started collected vintage glass bottles rather recently, although it can be said that my obsession with antique glass began as a child, playing with my parents collection of perfume and medicine bottles. I also spent summers combing the Dorset beaches for sea-glass. There is something wonderfully tactile about old glass, and I especially like taking moulds from these bottles and slip-casting them numerous times, giving them a new life. This was also the first time I used my own illustrations for decals and after many hours on photoshop (about 10, in which I very nearly threw the computer out of the library window) I created an A3 page with a few hundred moths on. So here we are… Moth Bottles.

A friend bought me this bottle when she spied it in a Antique shop, the name Mrs A Allens runs down the sides.

Although the shape of this bottle is less interesting than the others, I have to say I like the bold text on the front, and it definitely made it easier apply decals on. This bottle has a rather grim history, as Magnesia Citrate was used as a laxative, often used before examination and surgery on the colon. Nice bottle though.

I am not an illustrator by any means, but I did enjoy drawing all the moths that I used, which turned out to be about twenty in total, using a black fine line pen. I worked from a book that had photos of moth and butterfly specimens, and I tried to be as accurate as possible at capturing the patterns of these delicate insects.

This bottle was bought for my by another friend from a charity shop. I grew up with Pyrex, and I was absolutely thrilled to be given this antique babies bottle, which has measurements down two of its eight facets.