Antique Yellow Baccarat Opaline Scent Bottle

Antique Baccarat Yellow Opaline Scent Bottle

France | Circa 1860

A scent bottle in hard to find yellow opaline, the body moulded overall in pointes de diamant, the diamond-point pattern Baccarat carried across its glass for decades, so that the entire surface breaks the light into small facets. The colour is the thing. It is a clear, high, acid yellow that opaline very rarely achieves and that no photograph quite settles. A gilt band circles the shoulder, and the stopper is a separate piece of white opaline modelled as a tulip bud, petals furled, edged in gold.

The model is pictured in Baccarat's 1860 catalogue.

Yellow was among the more difficult opalines to make, which is why it appears so seldom beside the pinks and blues that everyone knows. This one has kept its saturation entirely.

Condition, stated plainly, because it matters here. The bottle itself is sound: no chips, no cracks, with loss only to the gilding. The stopper has several chips to the petal tips, with gilt wear in the same places. Against that, the piece still presents beautifully, and the damage is where a hand has touched it for a hundred and sixty years rather than anywhere structural.

Use it as it was made, or don't. At seven and a half inches it works as a small vase, and with the stopper set beside it rather than in it, the two read as a still life on their own.

Details

• Object: Scent bottle with tulip-bud stopper
• Maker: Baccarat
• Material: Yellow opaline with white opaline stopper, gilt decoration
• Pattern: Moulded pointes de diamant
• Origin: France
• Date: Circa 1860, the model pictured in Baccarat's 1860 catalogue
• Height: 7.5 inches
• Condition: Bottle with no chips or cracks and loss to the gilding; stopper with several chips to the petal tips and associated gilt wear