The manufacture of bottles and their application as containers is a fascinating story, and this book includes illustrations of over two hundred examples. In rubbish dumps all over Britain such bottles are still being dug up, each non-machine made bottle a collector's item.

For centuries wine has been served at table out of expensive and often elaborate serving vessels. The unrivalled transparency of lead crystal, invented in late-seventeenth-century England, led to glass, rather than silver or ceramics, increasingly being used as the favoured material. Although initially influenced by the contemporary wine bottle, from the middle of the eighteenth century the design of decanters became ever more subject to changing fashions. This book traces the developments and changing styles of these most elegant and useful pieces of glass tableware from the mid Georgian period to the Art Deco period of the 1930s. The many illustrations show the wide variety of decanters still available outside museum and private collections.

David Leigh has been passionately interested in antique glass since childhood. He has for nearly three decades been a partner in Laurie Leigh Antiques of Oxford, the family business specialising in antique table glass.

Glass and Glassmaking £3.50
Roger Dodsworth 978 0 85263 585 8 (Album 83) 32 pp, 46 ills.

This book offers a general introduction to the vast and complex subject of glass. The author examines not just the history and technology of glassmaking, but also the social background – the lives of the glassmakers and the traditions of this fascinating and ancient craft. Glass was known to the ancient Egyptians, though the technique of blowing glass was not introduced until the Roman period. The spectacular English contribution was the lofty brick glass cone which acted as a chimney for the furnace. The author takes us inside the cone, describes the basic glassmaking techniques and explains the mysteries of the rich vocabulary that surround this ancient craft.

Roger Dodsworth is a member of the Glass Circle and a founder member of the Glass Association, on whose committee he has served since 1983.

Pressed Flint Glass £3.50
Raymond Notley 978 0 85263 782 1 (Album 162) 32 pp, 33 ills.

Pressed flint glass has never been out of production since its introduction at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and vast quantities have been manufactured. This book surveys the development of the processes which transformed glassmaking from a craft into an industry, supplying an expanding consumer market with a wide range of elaborately moulded decorative ware and fittings as well as cheap, serviceable, expendable items.

Raymond Notley has a wide knowledge of Victorian and Edwardian decorative and graphic arts. He is reserch contributor to The Glass Cone magazine and edits the Journal of the Carnival Glass Society. He is the author of the Shire Album Carnival Glass (currently out of print).

Scent Bottles £3.50
Alexandra Walker 978 0 85263 909 2 (Shire Album 210) 64 pp, 55 ills

This book traces the history of the scent bottle from the alabaster containers of ancient Egypt to mass-produced commercial bottles. Perfume has been used in religious ceremony and also in medicine, for it was believed to have the power to ward off illness. Elaborately chased silver pomanders were carried during times of plague. The frivolity and luxury of scent were reflected in eighteenth-century ‘toys’, bottles in the form of fruit and figures in porcelain or enamel. The Victorian lady had a wide choice of scent bottles, including dual-purpose bottles which also held smelling salts or sal volatile. In the twentieth century, after Lalique’s successful collaboration with Coty, commercial bottles were made in a wide variety of forms ranging from the highly luxurious to the amusing bakelite containers of the 1920s and 1930s.

Alexandra Walker has worked at the Harris Museum and Art Gallery in Preston since 1975. Her interest in scent bottles developed from working with the collection of over 2700 examples in the Mrs French bequest to the Harris Museum.

Discovering Stained Glass £5.99
John Harries and Carola Hicks 978 0 7478 0205 1 (Db 43) 96 pp, 32 colour, 30 b/w ills.

Most churches and cathedrals in Britain contain stained glass; even the most unassuming buildings may have spectacular windows full of figures painted as if by coloured light. This wealth of imagery dates not only from the Middle Ages but also from the nineteenth century, when the majority of existing windows were made. Much of this later glass is very finely designed and of great interest. The earlier glass is rarer and often not in its original position: we need to understand the intentions of the designers and craftsmen in order to appreciate it fully.

John Harries originally wrote this guide to stained glass to help the general reader and church visitor to know what glass to look for and where to look for it.
This third edition has been completely revised and expanded by Dr Carola Hicks, a former curator of the Stained Glass Museum at Ely Cathedral.

For other Church History titles click here

Studio Glass £4.99 £1.99 *special price until 31.1.08

Graham McLaren 978 0 7478 0527 4 (Album 403) 48 pp, many colour ills

This book considers one of the liveliest areas of the decorative arts to emerge during the second half of the twentieth century. The new approaches to glassmaking that evolved during the 1960s liberated glassmaking from the factory and placed it in the hands of individual glassmakers. The result has been a glassmaking movement that has produced colourful, innovative and exciting work. Concentrating on the British context, this book provides an introduction to the work of significant contemporary makers along with the themes and ideas that have shaped their work.

Dr Graham McLaren teaches the history of ceramics and glass at Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent. He leads the unique MA in the History of Ceramics, taught in conjunction with the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Hanley. Other titles for Shire by this author are:

www.jhstudioglass.com