Unlike some of my other perfume bottles decorated by Alvin silversmiths that I absolutely KNOW to be Steuben-made vessels, I am a little bit more hesitant about identifying this one, so the Steuben name does not appear in my title. However, this fabulous LARGE bottle appears to be Steuben shape number 3093. Whoever made this bottle, the Steuben nomenclature “cologne” definitely seems apt. This bottle is huge, and if it were meant to be filled with perfume, Agnes (the lucky lady whose name is engraved on the cartouche of this bottle), must have been a woman of means. ;-)

This bottle bears the Alvin design number 3173, which appears on the bottom ring of silver just to the right of center when you are looking at the back of the bottle. I am showing it to you in two places, the one I just mentioned, in the right half of my third composite image, and, because the bottle is rotated somewhat in the right half of my second composite image, the marks appear to the left of center. To the left of the design number, you can see the tripartite Alvin mark, and to its left, you can see the almost pure silver content, 999/1000 FINE. As you may know, sterling is “only” 925 parts silver.

This bottle is in excellent condition, with the usual nicks and dings you would find in the silver on an item that was used on a daily basis. Likewise, the bottom has the typical scratches in the glass you would expect to see in an item that might have been frequently moved around on Agnes’s vanity. However, the glass is amazingly clear!

There are several minor condition “issues” that are not due to use, as are the ones I just mentioned. Rather, they come from the actual manufacturing process. There are a few places in the silver design where the chasing was obviously a bit too deep, and rather than leaving an incised design in the silver, they cut off a tiny bit instead. I am showing you one of these areas in my fourth composite image. There are a few others, all just as trivial, which I do not show, but you can get the general idea of what I mean from my fourth image. I have chosen the particular image to show, since it is useful to show you another factory “booboo,” namely the tiny bubble in the glass. It may not be absolutely obvious, but that bubble appears to the right of and just above the cartouche containing Agnes’s name. It is tiny!

Another manufacturing issue are the splits in the silver along the circumference of the rim. It was hard to show these to you, since they are really thin and don’t really show much separation in the silver. I am not sure how this happened, but it is clear that the thin separations came during the application of the silver and not afterward. I may be making them appear much worse by calling your attention to them with my drawn-on lines. The separation in the silver is trivial, and it is a thing of the past; there is no way it could get worse.

In that same composite image, you can see that the bottom of the bottle and the flat end of the stopper are each etched “65.” There is an “S” etched above the “65” on the bottle, but I have no idea what that signifies.

The only things remaining to tell you are the bottle’s dimensions. With the stopper inserted, it is 6 1/2 inches high. It is hard to be precise because of the curve in the glass, but, at its widest point, the bottle measures a bit over 4 inches. The diameter of the base is just over 3 1/8 inches. The bottle weighs just over 1 pound 9 ounces!

Please write if you have any questions, and if you are a fan not only of silver overlay, but of Steuben glass, be sure to check this bottle’s (probable) cousins—also spectacularly adorned by Alvin—elsewhere in my shop. Of course, that suggestion goes as well to those of you who know someone who would like one of these bottles as a gift. ;-)