Ships, Folk Art, and Whimsey in Bottles

The art of putting things in a bottle is well over 300 years old. Mining motifs, sometimes equipped with simple mechanisms, come from the Erzgebirge, Vogtland and Harz mountains. The bottle pyramid is over this an usual special case among the patience bottles. This object in a two litres bottle combines both subjects to illustrate the precursors of the ships in bottles. At the bottom, alongside miners, the mountain spirit and St. Barbara as the patron saint of miners can be seen, above which technical equipment such as a water wheel, hunt (little wagon to carry coal), iron hammer and stamp mill can be seen. The construction is crowned by the Gustav-Adolf-Stavechurch of Hahnenklee-Bockswiese, completed in 1908.