Pulling out the stops
From Victorian patents to ladies’ legs, Ellie Tennant explores the competitive realm of antique corkscrew collecting
s the gavel fell at Reeman Dansie Auctioneers in Colchester on 26th November 2014, a round of applause filled the room. An ‘unusual Victorian corkscrew’, estimated to fetch around £400–£600, had sold for an eye-watering £40,000 to an anonymous buyer. It was – and remains – the most expensive corkscrew sold at auction, ever.
‘It was a rare ratchet mechanism Charles Osborne-patented corkscrew made using iron and wood that was in the foundation of the Old London Bridge for 656 years,’ enthuses Reading-based collector and dealer Peter
Borrett. ‘Collectors get excited about ratchet corkscrews anyway, but this one was in great condition with an inscription and the provenance was fascinating, too.’
The anonymous buyer turned out to be Ion Chirescu – a wealthy Romanian who has spent the past decade amassing the world’s largest collection of corkscrews and dominating the market.
His purchases are now housed in a shiny new museum in Bucharest, where aisles of well-lit cases display Ion’s impressive and varied hoard of over 30,000 antique corkscrews.
‘He suddenly just appeared,’ says Peter. ‘When somebody new comes on the scene like that, it has a big impact. He’s built the best collection in the world in a very short time. For years, anything he didn’t have, he would just buy it on eBay – whatever the price. It was good for me, because I was selling stuff ’
Fortunately, you don’t have to be a millionaire to start collecting corkscrews. ‘You can get one that’s a hundred years old for a few pounds,’ says Peter. ‘Initially I just picked up a few here and there for 50p–£1, but I’m the sort of person who’s all or nothing so I started buying and selling pieces to finance my collection.’ Peter now has ‘around 3,000’ corkscrews – 800 in his private collection and the rest for sale.
Although entry-level prices are accessible, numbers quickly spiral up if it’s a known patent that was mass-produced. ‘A Victorian double-lever corkscrew by James Heeley, for instance, would fetch about £50,’ reveals Peter. ‘There are rare corkscrews that fetch more, too, but finding those is difficult. You’re competing with a lot of other people. You can have 20 regional auctions with corkscrew lots and only one of them will have a really good piece in it that’s worth £1,000 or more.’
Corkscrews first emerged in the early 1700s, when wine bottles began to have tight-fitting corks. Prior to that, wine wasn’t stored for longevity and corks could be removed with a knife. Samuel Henshall created the very first patented British – and worldwide – corkscrew in 1795. ‘It was made in conjunction with Matthew Boulton at his Soho manufactory in Birmingham,’ reveals Peter. ‘Henshall’s design had a little button on it to compress the pull and many ‘Henshall-type’ corkscrews were made by other makers later.’
Early corkscrews were simple but when the Victorians came along with their manufacturing ingenuity, hundreds of patents came out. ‘All the mechanical designs have different actions,’ explains Peter. ‘Concertina ones, for example, first appeared in 1884 when a design was patented by Marshall Wier. All the other concertina corkscrews then descended from that design.’
Makers in France, Germany, Italy and America also came up with different ideas at this time and there are hundreds of subgenres within the corkscrews category. Antique versions were made in a plethora of materials – scrimshaw, horn, wood, ivory, silver, brass, bronze – the diversity of designs appeals to collectors and attracts new ‘helixophiles’ to what Peter jokingly refers to as: ‘the twisted hobby’.
Folding or sheathed corkscrews were often kept in a gentleman’s jacket pocket and whipped out