1475 – Witch Bottle

Physical description:

A wide stoneware bottle, greyish cream in colour, with a short neck sealed with dark blue sealing wax over a cork (the kind of hard wax used for sealing letters in the past).

Museum classification:

Protection

Size:

23 cm tall

Information:

This object has been part of the collection since the 1970s, and sometimes referred to as containing a witch in beetle form.

It has been suggested that the following handwritten card in the document archive (doc. no. 9387a in Document Archive Box 55) relates to it: "Ginger Beer Bottle with ball stopper - spirit prison. buried upside down. black beetal [sic] entombed'" However, this surely refers to the kind of thick glass bottle with a marble inside, invented for carbonated drinks in 1872.

Some research notes apparently associated with it read as follows:

"The bottle was opened in 2018.  The following contents were recorded:

A lot of desiccated matter

Six snail shells

One small Beetle/fly wing (whole)

Droppings?

Very small Twigs

Two tibia from Cock Chafer Beetle (PH's estimation, needs authenticating)

Small segmented legs (of another beetle, part of abdomen)"

However, in spite of some damage round the edges, the wax seal on the top seems intact.

What is clear, however, is that it is some kind of witch bottle, particularly as it has been so carefully sealed.

 

Resource:

Object

Materials:

Pottery

Copyright ownership:

Treetrunk Ltd.

This object has been part of the collection since the 1970s, and sometimes referred to as containing a witch in beetle form.

It has been suggested that the following handwritten card in the document archive (doc. no. 9387a in Document Archive Box 55) relates to it: "Ginger Beer Bottle with ball stopper - spirit prison. buried upside down. black beetal [sic] entombed'" However, this surely refers to the kind of thick glass bottle with a marble inside, invented for carbonated drinks in 1872.

Some research notes apparently associated with it read as follows:

"The bottle was opened in 2018.  The following contents were recorded:

A lot of desiccated matter

Six snail shells

One small Beetle/fly wing (whole)

Droppings?

Very small Twigs

Two tibia from Cock Chafer Beetle (PH's estimation, needs authenticating)

Small segmented legs (of another beetle, part of abdomen)"

However, in spite of some damage round the edges, the wax seal on the top seems intact.

What is clear, however, is that it is some kind of witch bottle, particularly as it has been so carefully sealed.