I've been too busy with tax season as well as some other projects that I have going on to post to the blog. Now that I'm pretty caught up, here's my latest finds from the past few months. The Hull Royal Club corkscrew in the center is sure to be a strong contender for my Best Six for 2024. Other notable examples include a boars rusk handle corkscrew with a relief carving of a monkey stealing a couple bottles of wine, an unusual wooden alligator carving, a stag handle corkscrew with deer carving. The Sterling silver roundlet is fairly interesting as well; I didn't realize until I actually handled it that all of the art nouveau decorations are actually all inscriptions including some initials and a date. Stay tuned, more rare corkscrews are arriving soon.
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I've added yet another variation of the Anri drunk lamppost man to the collection. This version is a rare sailor variant that I won at auction for a really great price; I guess that nobody else saw it. Unfortunately I can't make out what port is written on his hat. Coincidentally, I sold the piece (below, center with the ashtray) today. It was a very unique piece, but I decided to let it go since it didn't have a corkscrew.
It's hard to ask for better corkscrews to be your first finds of the year. These two will certainly be best six contenders for the year. Both are made of carved whale tooth Scrimshaw. One is carved with shoulder length uniform bust of George Washington with ribbon banner below with carved inscription Cincinnatus Lucius Quinctus (name of the Roman patrician, statesman and military leader, for whom the American Revolutionary war officers Order of Cincinnatus was named) the other end is carved in the form of an eagle head. The second corkscrew is intricately carved into a cornucopia.
My first find of 2024 isn't actually a corkscrew and it didn't cost me anything. One of my neighbors was nice enough to gift me a few vintage trade catalog pages. Thank you Bill, these are welcome additions to the collection. I have seen these over the years in books and listed on eBay, but I have never owned any until now. If only the prices were still as good as they were back then.
Once we hit December 1st I started getting emails from fellow collectors showing their best six corkscrews for 2023 and I must admit that I found it a little odd since we had a whole month left to add more corkscrews to our collections for 2023, and possibly a best six contender. Although, from my experience, December is usually a pretty slow time for buying corkscrews. People are on holiday; the auction houses are on holiday, and there usually just isn't much out there. I have yet to finalize my best six for 2023, but will be doing so in the next few days.
I'm excited to report that I managed to acquire a best six contender just before the end of the year. It's a Christmas miracle! Arriving a few days before Christmas was this phenomenal boars tusk corkscrew with mechanical frame and a Sterling silver bear's head with ruby eyes. Stay tuned; my 2023 best six is coming soon as well as the first few corkscrews of 2024 which are sure to end up in next/this year's best six. My parents and I took a little trip to Phoenix over the holidays and I'm happy to report that on this trip I did in fact find and purchase a rare corkscrew at an antique mall. Before I get ahead of myself, the 3 corkscrews on the right were online purchases which were waiting once we got back home. That being said the corkscrew on the left was found in an antique mall in Scottsdale (near Phoenix) and is a fairly rare piece. Its an advertising piece with the advertising stamped into the handle and includes a bottle opener. The advertising is for CONTINENTAL DISTRIBUTING CO ; HY-LITE WINES & LIQUORS. This is the first corkscrew with this design that we've added to the collection. The other corkscrews include a near perfect condition Syroco boxer corkscrew, a tiny faceted/gold-gilt perfume corkscrew, and an ivory tusk corkscrew with a Sterling sliver end cap engraved with the year 1900; a fitting addition for the final corkscrews added to the collection for 2023.
I'm wrapping up my last finds of 2023 and will be posting my best six for 2023 shortly. One of the corkscrews that's been holding me up is pictured below. It's a beautiful ivory tusk with somewhat brutalist Sterling silver staples enlodged into the endcaps. I acquired this corkscrew mid-year on eBay, but I've waited to post about it until now because I usually like to polish and clean the corkscrews before posting and this one was pretty tarnished when I got it. The brutalist staples combined with how tarnished it was made it quite difficult to polish. It's a unique and welcome addition to the collection.
If you've read my blog before then you're probably use to me being unable to find any decent corkscrews in antique stores and coming back home empty handed save for the corkscrews which were acquired online during my trip. Fortunately, on this trip I was able to find a few corkscrews in an antique mall as well as some decent internet finds. Not all of the corkscrews that I found in the antique malls were winners (see photo below of a $2 corkscrew handle missing the screw).
In my last post, I talked about this interesting corkscrew that I had acquired at auction. When I purchased it, it was so tarnished that I didn't even realize that it was ebony as well as silver until it had arrived. Up until then, I had not seen another example, and upon researching, I still hadn't found another example. That was until soon after another one showed up at a different auction house, but this example features two knives built into the handle. So I did the most rational thing that I could do, which was to buy it at any cost. I was able to find a similar corkscrew (same shank, helix, and knives, but different handle) in a friend's collection which was marked Gorham. Let me know if you have seen one of these beauties or if you're lucky enough to have one in your collection.
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James ZalaznikI'm constantly adding new corkscrews to my collection. Any new finds as well as articles which may be of interest to corkscrew collectors will be posted here. Archives
January 2024
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