George P Collard

This  top of an earthenware flagon is a more recent find. It is impressed with the name P. Collard & Son, wine and spirit merchants, Canterbury. In fact the complete name should read George P Collard who traded as a wine and spirit merchant from their premises at 32 St Margaret s Street Canterbury. The nearest date I could find in a directory is 1884 and that came from a Canterbury directory on the internet, Above the word "son" there is a Lambeth Doulton potters mark.
It is surprising how many fragments of large flagon  that do appear on the Margate coastline especially in and around the harbour area. So far this year I have only found two fragments that have a clear identity the rest have been unidentifiable.

Brylcreem

I have never been one for Brylcreem, but this bottle does fascinate me. It just oozes 1930's art deco by its design and shape plus it has that beach weathered  appearance. Items from the 1930's are something I do not often come across as my focus is the older stuff but I do cherry pick unique 1930's items for the Margate museum.
Come the end of November the Beachcomber exhibition at the Museum  ends and I should point out that my only contribution to the exhibition was to find the stuff. All the work, research, layout and presentation was done by the army of Museum volunteers.
 Last week I donated 12 complete Margate bottles to the Museum collection and I am now going through the items the Museum can have for display material or for the permanent collection.
My two pet projects Georgian Margate and Earthenware in general are coming along well and I am learning more day by day about that area of Margate. I have found earthenware pieces of Dutch and German origin and it does come as a surprise that German spring water was bottled in three pint earthenware containers and sealed with cement. Only to be exported to London and then consumed on Margate main sands.
Recently inside the harbour I did find part of a top of a George Barret ginger beer bottle that matched up perfectly with another piece I found in February during the deep digging . Both pieces were found in different locations, something I put down to the excavations.
Shards from George Barret Ginger beer bottles are heading the tally at present but the reason I keep them all is that I can get data about all the different designs and manufactures of the bottles. Something that is becoming clear is that in the same time period there are two distinct quality of bottles used by the same companies. I am now starting to think that this could be down to Victorian snobbery  as the mineral water outlets may have deliberately catered for two different class of customers by the quality of the bottles.