Glass bottle

Bag bottle made of opaque white glass, painted with polychrome enamel on both sides. The front shows two lions holding cloth shears on a landscape base, with a crown above them, a gilded rim decorated with scattered flowers above a feathery vine. According to the inventory card, the inscription ‘Vivat es lebe der Tuchbereiter Joseph Richter’ on the reverse.

The now forgotten craft of cloth preparation involved the further refinement of raw woven or fulled fabrics. The cloth shears depicted on this bottle had been the guild symbol since the late Middle Ages.

A counterpart (H. 16.9 cm) with a very similar front was in the Joos collection before it was auctioned. It bears the inscription ‘Vivat / Es leben die Herren Tuchbreiter’ on the back and, based on an identical bottle in the Passau Glass Museum, is believed to have originated in Bohemia and dates from the end of the 18th century. The photograph was taken by Erwin Schreyer.