Southern bottle cases

Magazine Antiques, August, 2004 by Anne S. McPherson

The bottle case--a fitted box set on a frame with tall legs--is one of the furniture forms most sought after by southern collectors today (see Pls. III, IIIa). Mainly found in parts of North Carolina and Virginia, the earliest bottle cases date from the mid-eighteenth century, but the form reached the height of its popularity during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Today examples are frequently referred to as cellarets, but period inventories list them as gin cases, brandy cases, bottle cases, or cases of bottles. (1) At the time the term cellaret referred to a related, shorter-legged form that was frequently lined with lead and was intended to keep bottles of wine cool, as well as to hold them. (2) George Hepplewhite (d. 1786) illustrated such a form in his Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide of 1788.

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In the early eighteenth century William Byrd II (1674-1744) of Virginia wrote disparagingly about the diet and manners of the residents of northeastern North Carolina. In particular he describes their consumption of large amounts of "Strong Drink ... [which] they get with such Difficulty that they are never guilty of the Sin of Suffering it to Sour upon their Hands." (3) This widespread consumption of alcohol and its importance in entertaining throughout the Chesapeake Bay region of the South was surely a contributing factor to the development of the bottle case, a form that appears to have been restricted to coastal Maryland, Virginia, and northeastern North Carolina, and to regions to which people from those areas migrated, such as the Piedmont of Virginia and North Carolina, and even more rarely, parts of western Maryland, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Interestingly, bottle cases do not appear to have been made in the coastal regions of South Carolina and Georgia. (4)

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The most common early container for the storage of bottles in Britain and British North America was probably a simple dovetailed box partitioned to hold square gin bottles. These boxes could be carried about the house and to the cellar for replenishing, and they could be pulled up to, or even under, the table. Again describing northeastern North Carolina, Byrd wrote of the "Shear Rum, of which there is always a Reserve under the Table." (5) The footed bottle case in Plate II represents a slightly later development of the simple box. The evolution to a lidded dovetailed box with internal partitions set on a frame with tall legs was accomplished by the middle of the century, but only a handful of colonial examples are known to survive.

The configuration of the interiors of bottle cases vary, and they were probably custom ordered, partitioned to provide for differing numbers and sizes of bottles and glasses and, in a few rare examples, for sugar and/or coffee. In 1784 John Shaw, a cabinetmaker in Annapolis, Maryland, requested a client to "Send to the glass man about the bottles" so that he could complete a drawer of a sideboard table that was to be fitted for bottles. (6) Apparently, either the partitions or the bottles or both could be made to suit, and the same presumably held true for the interiors of bottle cases.

Almost invariably bottle cases could be removed from their stands and thus were portable. Most have carrying handles on the sides. The walnut example illustrated in Plate III is one of only three known pre-Revolutionary examples from Tidewater Virginia. (7) According to oral tradition, it was owned by William Byrd III (1728-1777) of Westover plantation on the James River, the son of the William Byrd II quoted above. Unlike most later examples, this case was finished on all four sides so that it could be drawn into a room and thus truly function as a portable cellar. Like many bottles cases, it has a slide that pulls out to provide a work surface for pouring or mixing drinks or perhaps for refilling its twelve bottles. Also, as is typical, it is fitted with a lock. (8)

Plate IV shows one of two known colonial North Carolina bottle cases, both with cabriole legs. (9) John Bivins attributed it to the Roanoke River basin of northeastern North Carolina and probably to the shop of Thomas Sharrock, a cabinetmaker who was trained in Norfolk, Virginia, and had moved to northeastern North Carolina by 1765. The interior is divided into three compartments, one of which was originally partitioned for the storage of six square gin bottles; the other two compartments anticipate the pattern of southern sugar chests of the nineteenth century, with the larger of the two intended to hold brown sugar and the smaller for white sugar or coffee. (10) This bottle case also has drawers--a feature found on most later examples. The square shape of the case in Plate III is more typical of early bottle cases from Virginia and North Carolina than is the rectangular shape of the one in Plate IV.

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