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Price in the UK is £10 + p&p. 
To place an order email fay.banks@fsmail.net

Price in the USA is $20 + p&p.

To place an order contact G. Q. Clodfelter,  P.O. Box 874. ALTON, IL62002, Fax at 618-465-5704, email circastuff@charter.net

88 pages including 32 full colour plates and 17 black & white drawings and photographs

A comprehensive history of the sealed wine bottles of All Souls College Oxford

Summary

Amongst the most famous sealed wine bottles are those associated with Oxford. The best known Oxford bottles are those associated with All Souls College, the majority of which bear the initials A. S. C. R. standing for All Souls Common Room.

As many as 60,000 bottles were produced for the college over the 1750-1850 period but with natural wastage there were only 1000 left in the 1960s. Even the college does not now have an example of all the recorded seals.

Most bottle enthusiasts have an "ASCR" bottle in their collection.  Indeed for many this is the first sealed bottle they ever buy.  Few collectors, however appreciate that All Souls bottles span a hundred years of history, from 1750 to around 1850 and that there are 20 different seals and 24 different types of bottle plus many more subtle variations in shape and size.  In many respects the All Souls bottles, which are well documented as to their age and manufacture, provide unrivalled insights into the development of the "English" wine bottle through this time.  The danger for those collectors who have understood the diversity in the All Souls bottles is that they can become obsessive about having one of every possible type and variation, an almost impossible task!

This book is aimed both at the bottle collector and at the general reader interested in the social evolution of Oxford in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries and the part that wine played in that history.

The first chapter gives a brief outline of the development in wine bottle shape from 1640-1850. The next chapter describes the development of the college "Common Room".

The following chapter outlines the history of All Souls College and highlights its unique position within the University of Oxford.  The next chapter describes the importance of wine in the social life of Oxford in the late 1740s and how the focus of wine drinking changed at that time from the taverns to the college Common Rooms.

The development of wine cellars and college wine bottles in All Souls is described showing the pivotal role of William Blackstone, Professor of English Law, and famous throughout Britain and North America for his "Commentaries", a hugely influential series of law books, parts of which helped to form the American Constitution.  The bottles themselves are then described in detail in chronological order and with reference to their date and place of manufacture in so far as these are known.

A final chapter provides a subjective view on the scarcity, desirability and relative value of each of the bottle types.

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