Ships, Folk Art, and Whimsey in Bottles

From the artist, Chris Wood: "I made the frame for this bottle three or four years ago and put it aside as I could never find anything to go in it as it was so small. I searched through thousands of tiny pictures I owned but nothing fit. I tried printing something out that was of interest to me but no matter which printer I used when I resized it, it became grainy and ugly and nothing online worked or looked good in the size I needed. I decided it had to be already professionally printed and be this size. I found this picture of General McClellan that worked. Some say McClellan was a great Civil War general, but most say he retreated every time he was winning. The sword has a detailed carved handle and is proportional just like the original sword with the right thickness and it even has the line on the blade, though all this is hard to see. I painted it with super small brush strokes and bronze/silver/gold rubbing. On the bottom of the frame it says, Chris Wood 5-21-08. There are flags suspended from the stopper. The rear of the flags says C on the left & W on the right, which I thought was neat as my initials or Civil War. The reverse side says, "Major General George B. McClellan L.H. Hilliard Graphite Drawing Dec. 18, 1865. I used a revolutionary new frame assembly method, that makes it easy, but this was a first try and my holes for the strings running through the pieces inside, didn't line up perfectly, but it finally worked out. The carved cannonballs on top of the stopper hide the hole from the string, going through the inside of the stopper & shaft, that was used to help pull everything together. The opening of the bottle is 9/32" or a mere 5.33 millimeters.