Ships, Folk Art, and Whimsey in Bottles

"I found this old pair of 33" Kiwi brand shoe laces in some things from my childhood, still in the wrapper. I don't know if it is from the 80, 70's, or earlier (since I got lots of my parents things) but they are virtually the same today. I was about to use the strings to replace a broken shoestring as a pull on one of those mechanical wooden woodpecker toys when I looked at it and thought, hey, that might make a neat impossible bottle with the lace tip as the crossbar, so I looked through my hundreds of old bottles until I found this one to match. As to how I made it, you'll just have to figure that out, but I can tell you that it would not & did not go through all as one piece (or in other words, the paper & string went in separately). The neck opening is 7/16 of an inch in diameter while the laces extend to about 1" wide at the most. The 3/8" shaft of the stopper was carved separate & attached and features some very nice bevel cut edges just above the part where the lace crossbar goes through. Finally, I topped it off with an old drawer knob for a stopper & glued the entire stopper mechanism in place so people wouldn't be pulling it up & damaging the trick stopper. The bottle itself is a machine made bottle in an Owen's automatic bottle machine with a crudely molded double ring (collar) lip in clear with 192 embossed on the bottom in the vacuum suction mark, and with an amazing amount of small pin hole bubbles, dating from the late 1910's to 1920's, measures 5" tall, & is 5 & 9/16" tall counting the stopper. It was finished in about five hours on July 12, 2009 (the day before my birthday). It is not signed as I didn't want anything obscuring it really (just like I hate large obvious signatures on paintings), but I might put a label or engrave my name on the bottom later. But take note, IT WAS NOT "Made in Honduras" despite saying it 3 times ;^) I hope you like it." Chris Wood, Artist