Glass and British pharmacy, 1600-1900 : a survey and guide to the Wellcome Collection of British glass / J.K. Crellin and J.R. Scott.

  • Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine
Date:
1972
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Glass and British pharmacy, 1600-1900 : a survey and guide to the Wellcome Collection of British glass / J.K. Crellin and J.R. Scott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/96 (page 11)
    Figures 8 &9: Two illustrations of the same shop, showing the changing style at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. It illustrates the disappearance of carboy and specie jar noted on p10. Taken from Mr Dale ordered (in the late 18th century) all his bottles to be made at Warrington, suggesting that they were custom made. Lucas also gave a plan for an ideal layout of a pharmacy, where glass rounds were apparently prominent®®. But whatever the extent of the 18th-century use of shop rounds, they were certainly regular items of commerce by the 1830s and ’40s, being keenly promoted by the shop-fitting companies as well as by glass manufacturers®’. As such, innumerable minor variations in design became readily avail- able to enhance the premises of those who wished to pay a little extra. For instance, the York Glass Company Catalogue of 1897 illustrates a range of globe, compressed globe, and cut glass stoppers for wide- and narrow-mouthed round jars. The same range applied to square shop ‘rounds’ ®®. Labelling, too, presented a wide choice, from hand-painted to recessed labels covered with glass (see p18). Many accounts of new premises appeared in the pharmaceutical literature during the last two decades of the 19th century, and it is clear that bottles were considered a main feature of the décor. Describing a new ‘bright and artistic pharmacy’ in 1889, the Chemist and Druggist wrote ‘the fittings throughout are of American walnut, dull polished. The bottles are recess-labelled and ‘Chemists’ Windows — An illustrated Treatise on the Art of Displaying Pharmaceutical and Allied Goods in Chemists’ Shop Windows’, published by the ‘Chemist and Druggist’, London, 1915, pp7 and 8. labels to correspond and handsome nickel handles [etc]’®°. The rows of clear glass rounds lining mahogony shelves must have often been enlivened, at least by the last few decades of the 19th century, witha miscellany of display vessels. Many of these were designed to advertise the goods of a particular manufacturer (eg Warner’s pills, Fig 63), and area good example of the growing influence of the pharmaceutical industry on retail pharmacy during the second half of the 19th century. This impact is also reflected in special glass show cases for medicines, in particular homoeopathic prep- arations. Much more elegant than the manu- facturers’ containers, however, were ornate show vessels, in a variety of shapes, usually associated with Continental pharmacy. It is quite probable that the majority of these were, in fact, imported from France and Germany (see Fig 65). They are one example of the increasing concern with display towards the end of the century. Also relieving the rows of water-white glass rounds were similar containers, but of blue or green glass. Those in blue were most likely for syrups, being closed by fairly loose fitting plug stoppers. Syrup containers came in a particularly wide range during the late 18th and early 19th centuries — at least three styles in creamware and