Since the dawn of time, animals have been companions, enemies, prey, sources of wonder for man and for this reason they have been painted, sculpted and reproduced in all possible materials. After the first containers of the ancient world such as aryballos and ointment jars, animal-shaped scent bottles reappeared from the 18th century onwards in glass, porcelain or silver.
PORCELAIN
Meissen and Chelsea’s early pieces usually show a boy or woman with a pet or a lamb. The girl riding a cockerel is for now a unicum without any comparison for now.
Dogs and cats are often linked to couples and love, as a symbol of fidelity or betrayal.
The time and place where the imagination of porcelain modelers was unleashed, reproducing practically all known animals, was the period between the two world wars in Germany. The great economic crisis in which the country, defeated by the Great War, was immersed, required the production of non-precious objects, produced with inexpensive materials where only creativity could make up for quality. in my collection there are more than thirty porcelain animals with the characteristic metal crown cap, divided into two categories: those that realistically reproduce the characteristics of the animal and those that transform them into a fun object, for example by making a frog play the guitar. I particularly love those that are faithful to the original model and I find that, although they were probably mass-produced, they are modeled and painted with great skill. These pieces are becoming increasingly rare and certainly their fragility has not allowed many of them to survive intact. Seen all together they form a small, but unique zoo!
A pictures gallery: BIRDS
A pictures gallery: MAMMALS
A pictures gallery: PETS
A pictures gallery: REPTILES and SEA CREATURES
GLASS
The animal-shaped scent bottles in glass are extremely rare, both for the skill required to make them and for their fragility. It is not easy to date them, but I think that the mythical sea creature is the oldest one and it may have been produced in Victorian times, possibly in the so called Nailsea glass. The lizard is very similar, but it has a paper label saying “Lily of the Valley”.
Thanks to the selling catalogues we have more information about the scent bottle made in Germany by the Trout, a big family of glassmaker in the same period of the porcelain crown tops. They were sold as perfume bottles, but also as Christmas tree ornaments, in clear or colored glass. I own a bird that has been hand-painted, but the result is not the best.
Of much better quality and particularly interesting is the insect by Max Traut, completed with plastic wires as legs and antennae.
Produced by the same family of glassmakers but marketed under the brand HETRA are the blue face cat, sold as souvenir of the Chicago World’s Fair (1934), and the funny rabbit, listed in a catalogue of 1935.
To finish this excursus, the comparison between two bottles representing an elephant, but very different in concept and execution.
The first is part of the “Ingrid” collection by Schlevogt: he created many bottles with the name of his daughter, Ingrid. It is in lapislazuli glass with a plastic screw cap. Despite the high number of copies produced, around 1940, it is a highly sought-after piece by collectors and there are several versions, in which the only thing that changes is the cap.
The other is a unique piece in Murano glass, attributed with some certainty to the master Giacomo Cappellin, founder of “Maestri Vetrai Muranesi Cappellin & C.” active in Venice from 1925 to 1931. It is blown from a single glass bolus, without added elements and for this reason it is considered a small masterpiece. When it was exhibited at Palazzo Mocenigo in Venice, many glassblowers visited the exhibition to admire it. A fragile, wonderful scent bottle!
