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Most glass seals on bottles are more or less round or oval shaped. Bottles with ribbon seals are much rarer. We know of a French wine bottle bearing - next to the round seal with its brand - a second seal, ribbon shaped, reading "DEFENDU A VENDRE" (resale not allowed), but without doubt the most well-known ribbon sealed bottle is the liqueur bottle used by the "P.F. HEERING" distillery from Denmark. To distinguish their products from their competitors, Danish liqueur distillers started using ribbon sealed cylindrical bottles for export purposes. The main current day source for finding these ribbon sealed bottles is in the Caribbean around the former Dansk-Vestindiske Oer (Danish West-Indian Islands). The best known island is St Thomas, conquered in 1671 by the Danish. In 1917 Denmark sold its colony to the U.S.A.. The US planned to create a naval base there: close to the strategic Panama Canal. Since then this group of islands has been called the Virgin-Islands. The "P.F.Heering" distillery still exists in Denmark. The company was started by Peter Frederik Suhm Heering in 1818. Most probably he designed the ribbon seal for the bottles himself. The company was officially registered in England in 1877. Heering also designed a characteristic bottle for his liqueur: a rather short cylinder with a double collar ring around the top. The standard bottle measures 21cm. But there are also others; the biggest bottle is 27cm tall, the smallest is 18cm. Bottles blown in a Rickett's patent mould often have embossing on the bottom with the letters "KIOBENHAVN" around a star. |
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Here is an example of one of the Heering bottles. The seal reads: |
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This is probably a later bottle but with the same lettering: |
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