Shrub bottle

1790-1810

Measurements

11-1/4 in x 3-3/4 in (dia)

Materials

Green “common” glass, gilding

Credit Line

Historic Odessa Foundation

Accession Number

2024.18

Inscription

"SHRUB" is written in gilding across the body of the bottle.

Condition Notes

The gilded decoration has areas of wear.

Comments

The tall, blown bottle has a thin neck (slightly off-enter) and a single applied thread around the opening at the top.  The lower half of the bottle has a dappled surface from when it was blown into a metal mold to give it its cylindrical shape.  The underside of the bottle has a deep (2-1/2 inches) push-up with a ringed pontil mark.  (The push-up is visible through the glass as a darker area in the lower center.)

The bottle is made of "common" glass that is green in color.  Removal of impurities was necessary to eliminate the color.  This bottle, however, is adorned with ornate gilded decoration of grape clusters and leaves below a banner that reads "SHRUB."  Shrub was a popular fruit liqueur drink in the 18th century made with rum or brandy, sugar, and juice or rinds of fruit.  Shrub also might have denoted other kinds of fruit drinks, sometimes non-alcoholic.  Naming the contents of this bottle for the convenience of its owner relates to contemporary uses of silver labels or tags with the names of contents.  Those tags, on chains that slipped over the bottle neck, identified gin, brandy, bourbon, and other alcohols.

In Plantation Life at Rose Hill:  The Diaries of Martha Ogle Forman, 1814-1845, ed. Emerson Wilson Forman (Wilmington, Del.: Historical Society of Delaware, 1976), under the date March 15, 1820, Martha Forman records that her husband made shrub from the same oranges she had used the day before to made marmalade.  He made more on February 22, 1821, putting up 40 bottles.  Rose Hill is about 15 miles west of Odessa.