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We finally found a way to display the large arm corkscrew a year after acquiring it. We decided to mount it in a shadow box. So we built the back and sides out of oak, stained them, wrapped the back in gold satin, mounted the arm and all of the pieces that go with it as well as a fine bottle of French wine for looks, then added the frame and glass. Now we have a new piece of art that always gets commented on. This display was finished around November of 2007. 
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During the summer of 2014, my parents and I took a trip to Spain and France. During that trip I had the pleasure of seeing the largest corkscrew collection on display at the Vivanco Museum of Wine Culture as well as the finest private corkscrew collection that I had ever seen. (Note that The Museum of Romanian Records now holds the title of largest corkscrew collection on display).  I'm almost ashamed to say this, but without doing any research before our trip, we actually stumbled upon this museum. This isn't just a corkscrew museum it is a museum of all things wine and is the most comprehensive wine museum I have visited. I believe it had something along the lines of 6 different levels with each display more impressive than the last. You start off in this large room filled with farming equipment and slowly progress through the different stages of the winemaking process. Everything from the parasites that kill the vines to the barrel making process and tools is covered in this museum.  You finally enter this room filled with valuable wine related antiques. Picassos and other fine works covered the walls, several carved ivory pieces were behind glass including a narwhal horn and an ancient bronze sarcophagus all with wine motifs.      Finally you enter the last room which contains the corkscrew collection. But first, lunch. Did I mention that this place is huge? You can easily spend all day here. Fortunately for us they have an excellent restaurant on the grounds.               During the summer of 2014, my parents and I took a trip to Spain and France. During that trip I had the pleasure of seeing the largest corkscrew collection on display at the Vivanco Museum of Wine Culture as well as the finest private corkscrew collection that I had ever seen. (Note that The Museum of Romanian Records now holds the title of largest corkscrew collection on display).  We rented a chateau on a working vineyard in a small town just outside of Bordeaux. The owner who had lived there and worked on the vineyard his whole life said he knew a man who had a corkscrew collection. Sure enough, after a few days he had gotten ahold of the man and secured a visit for us. We had very little information and weren’t really sure what to expect. I didn’t know if this man had 50 corkscrews or 5000, but what I found far surpassed any expectations that I had.  We pull up to this beautiful house and are greeted by a well-dressed French Gentleman and his daughter who helped to translate. He takes us to his dining room where there are two large glasses cases containing numerous rare corkscrews. There was a little bit of everything, but what particularly stood out was the large number of ancient iron corkscrews, custom made and carved ivory pieces as well as corkscrews with original shagreen cases. He told us that he had purchased the bulk of the collection from a friend of his many years ago and like all corkscrew collectors had continued to compile more pieces. You could tell that he was very proud of his collection and for good reason as just those 2 cases of corkscrews were enough to make most collectors envious.          It had been several years since I've done an official count of the collection and with the major additions I've made in recent years, I decided that it was time to do another count. It took a few days since our collection is now spread across 3 properties, but as of today, our collection consists of:
 Over the next few days I will be making some major changes to the website. With the addition of the blog, the Articles section of the website has become a bit redundant, so that content will be posted to the blog to live out its days. I will also be posting updated pictures of all of our framed corkscrew displays as well as some other minor changes to clean the site up. In other news, I have commissioned a carpenter to build custom wine racks for my new wine cellar. This will mark the 3rd wine cellar in our family. A page on the website will be added in a few weeks once it's completed, but for now it's basically just a cold closet.  Who doesn't like a nice bar screw? Patented on June 15th, 1895, the Daisy is an excellent bar mounted corkscrew. This one is in fairly good condition with some minor rust and chrome loss. It will make a nice addition to the bar screw collection.    Perfume corkscrews were common in the 19th century, particularly in England. These small corkscrews often came as part of a toiletry set and were used to remove the small corks which sealed many perfume bottles during that time. There are many variations and they can often be found monogrammed or personalized in some way. Below are some new acquisitions. The one on the left is encrusted with some sort of jewel; something which isn't seen very often. The set on the right is engraved with a family crest of a crane and a griffin.    It's also common for larger toiletry sets to contain perfume corkscrews. This one below is fairly large and contains several items. The corkscrew is located in a secret compartment which is released by pressing a small button. It is a folding corkscrew with a faceted handle. These types of corkscrews are normally much larger, but this is a unique perfume example. The owner's name is engraved in some of the items; William Roe. After a little research, I was able to identify the original owner. According to Wikipedia: "William Roe was an Anglican Archdeacon in Ireland in the second half of the nineteenth century. Roe was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was Archdeacon of Kilmacduagh from 1859 until his death on February 16, 1882." This seems to be the owner since this set was made in Dublin and is hallmarked for 1845.     I've finally finished the 1st of 3 planned corkscrew displays in my office at work. This marks our 27th corkscrew display board and the 2nd located at our office. Pictures of all of our corkscrew displays can be found Here.  One of the most common questions that I get is "Where do you find all of these corkscrews?" to which I reply mainly online. When my parents started the collection over 30 years ago, they would find the majority of what made up our collection in antique stores, but it has become more difficult to find corkscrews in antique stores with the advent of the internet and websites like Ebay. I was visiting Houston for a few days and had some free time to search through some antique stores, here's what I found.  The picture above and below were both taken in an antique mall in Houston. Both of the corkscrews above are decent pieces, but at $350 & $155 they are way overpriced. The corkscrew below is a rare piece which I would have happily paid the $197 asking price if it was in good condition. It is a Williamsons stag horn corkscrew carved into an alligator grabbing a man sitting on a log. Unfortunately the corkscrew was in poor condition; missing the tail, the bell on the shank, as well as the man's head, hands, and legs.  On our way back to Dallas, we stopped at 3 more antique stores and eventually found 2 corkscrews worth purchasing. They're nothing special, but for $8 at least we're not leaving empty handed. PS, for those wondering, that's the Sam Houston statue in the background.  Every now and then a corkscrew turns up which is collectable solely because of its former owner. Celebrity owned corkscrews often sell for a premium and the most recent celebrity owned corkscrew to come up for auction was no acception. Burt Reynolds, the actor who was most well known for his role in the movie Smokey and the Bandit, died last year. His estate was auctioned off last week and it included a corkscrew. The corkscrew itself is a brass bar mounted Vintner corkscrew. We have a Vintner in the collection and use it almost daily for opening wine. These are great corkscrews and very reliable so I decided to place some low bids, but as you can see, the price shot up way past the estimate. In case you're wondering, the late actor did own a Smokey and the Bandit Trans Am which ended up bringing the most money in the auction selling for a cool $300,000.   |
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
August 2019
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