TWENTY-four years ago, Wazeer Latiff of De Willem, West Coast Demerara, started searching for, and buying, antique bottles for commercial purposes.
He hunted, bought and sold antique bottles recovered from the depths of the Berbice, Essequibo and Demerara Rivers, many of which had not seen the light of the day for over three hundred years.

Now a more mature person, Latiff regrets some of those sales. “I wish I could get back some of those bottles,” he said last week.

“In fact,” he said, “I am trying to buy back a particular one, which I sold to a friend who lives overseas.”

He is ardently hoping that the friend would relent and resell. His reasons: “At first, when I got into this business, it was all about money. But I have grown to fall in love with these bottles; these are windows into the past; part of our heritage; and I began to see that it was unfair for me to be selling these bottles to people overseas. Now I want these bottles, especially the rare ones, to remain here, so that Guyanese can look at them and enjoy speculating about them; speculating about the rich and interesting history surrounding them.”

QUOTE: ‘I have grown to fall in love with these bottles; these are windows into the past; part of our heritage…”

**Latiff has moved from being a seller to an avid collector of antique glass and stone ware. He is now the proud and passionate owner of arguably the largest collection of old bottles, and is in the process of setting up a private museum with the aim of keeping these “gems of the past” right here in Guyana.

The storage area of his home at De Kindren is filled with dozens of old glass and stone ware bottles found in Guyana’s rivers, many of them windblown from the early 17th century. Latiff said: “These bottles took me a long time to get.”

During a visit last week, these bottles of yesteryear provoked swirling questions in my head, such as: Who had been the owners?  What had been their contents? How and when did they get to where they were found?

I came to the conclusion that what I found most fascinating about those bottles was the thrill of holding something that had been held/owned by another human being in some instances over three hundred years ago. In short, they provided a strong feeling of engagement with Guyana’s past.

And I am not superstitious.

Latiff last week confirmed that those same feelings fuelled his passion to collect antiques.
His collection at De Willem is impressive. This collection is in addition to another set of old glass and stoneware bottles he has at his home on Wakenaam Island in Region 3 (West Demerara/ Essequibo Islands) along with Pre-Columbian Amerindian artifacts.
The types of old bottles vary from beer bottles (remember Tennents Beer), ink bottles, perfume bottles, 16th century shaft and globe wine bottles of various colours, 17th century pewter mugs, egg shaped aerated bottles, so called Onions, each bearing the telltale “Pontil mark” at their bases.

Latiff explained that the ages of the bottles can be determined by their method of manufacture.
Up to a hundred and fifty years ago, the glassworker would dip a hollow blowpipe into a molten mixture of sand and oxides, gather a small amount on the end of the pipe, and remove the glob from the oven.
Then, puffing air through the pipe with his mouth, he formed a small bubble inside the molten glass, to be placed in a mold.
The iron or wood mold was then closed around the sphere by an apprentice.
The glass was then blown to fill the inside of the mold.

The moment the bottle was blown, it was detached from the blowpipe and removed from the mold.
The sharp, broken end was then reheated, and the lip tooled with a fine, pliers-like instrument.
The finished bottle was then placed to cool in a container called the annealing oven.

In the case of the old ‘free-blown’ bottles, the same process was basically used, with one notable exception — no mold was used to shape the bottle.
Here the glassmaker’s skill was at its highest.
He puffed air into the molten blob of glass, twirling the blowpipe to utilize the forces of gravity, and used a small wooden paddle to help make the bottle round.

At this stage, another tool was used to help in finishing the bottle: the pontil rod. The ‘pontil’ rod was a solid, round iron bar.
A small globe of molten glass connected the rod to the bottom of the unfinished bottle, and the bottle was detached from the blowpipe by the application of a drop of cold water and a slight tap.
The neck was then finished as desired, flared or lipped.

Another tap freed the bottle from the pontil rod, leaving what is known as a ‘pontil-mark’.
An antique with the pontil mark or scar at the bottom speaks of its age, and is a highly valued item among collectors.

Latiff’s collection also includes antique bottles with the names of British Guiana businessmen on them. Many of them were for gin, but most were for aerated drinks.

A local name on antique bottles which contained alcohol was that of Luigi Psaila. In the early 20th century, Psaila was ranked as the oldest merchant in Water Street in the then British Guiana. His custom-made gin bottles were marked with the letters: “The Philantroph/Only/Imported- by Luigi Psaila/Demerara.
Psaila died at his residence at 178 Waterloo Street on December 8, 1914.
The business Psaila Brothers remained in the family until 1980, when they sold it and immigrated to North America.

Most of the stoppers of the antiques were cork, but Latiff has a few which were secured with the Codd Stopper, hailed as a major innovation in the late 19th century. The Codd Stopper was developed in England by Hiram Codd in 1872. A glass ball was held in place against a rubber ring at the top of the bottle by the gas pressure of the carbonated liquid inside.
To open the bottle, the marble was simply pushed down. Bottles with the glass ball Codd stoppers inside date from 1875.
A cylindrical shaped bottle with a flat base and a Codd stopper inside was embossed with the words: Demerara/ Ice House/
Proprietors D’Aguiar Bros./4 Robbstown/Buying or selling/ this bottle is illegal.

Another bottle with a Codd stopper is embossed Excelsoir/Soda Water Works/John Seabra & Co/ Berbice.

Latiff, a businessman mainly in the logging business, said last week that he would be using his home at De Willem for the museum which is to be a private museum.
When established, visitors are likely to be charged a fee for browsing, so that the museum can be maintained and expanded.

He says he hopes that it could become a tourist attraction.

Meantime, he plans to donate several of the rare bottles to the Guyana Museum, so that the general public can see them.
He said: “I wanted to put these in my private museum, but then I thought it would be unfair to keep these locked away. Some people will spend a lifetime without seeing these legacies. So I am handing them over to the museum so that they could be viewed and enjoyed by interested members of the public.”

Anyone who has an antique and wishes to sell it can contact Latiff at his home at Lot 115 De Willem, West Coast Demerara,  or on telephone # 641-2956.