Wine Bottle Stoppers & Display Stands
All of our wine bottle stoppers are securely attached by maple dowel and wood glue to a premium cork from Portugal, the home of the "cork oak" tree. We also make and sell display stands; when not in use we don't want these little guys to be shoved away in a drawer. Styles range from stately formal to madly whimsical. A wide variety of wood species are used, as are numerous categories of found objects, such "Nana's Buttons." Backstory: My wife's Nana, the late Helen Dravuschak of Catasauqua, PA, worked for many years as a seamstress in a factory in Northampton. Apparently, whenever a button caught Nana's fancy, she would squirrel it away; today we are lucky to have a large bowl of these colorful reminders of a great lady.
NOTE: Wine Bottle Stopper collectors, ask about custom displays, including wall mounted racks and stylized design. Also, we can duplicate anything you see here.
The Random Small Object - some folks might see it as a curiosity and nothing more, some may even see some beauty in it, though it's often a cast off thing, or perhaps is incomplete simply by itself. I can't help myself - I see it as a potentially awesome, memory spawning, conversation starting, "what the hell was he thinking?" Wine Bottle Stopper
New Line of Wine Stoppers!
Over the next few weeks we will be producing and displaying a new twist on our popular wine Bottle Stoppers. BACKSTORY: Feeling guilty about representing only my wife's side of the family with sentimental objects - the "Nana Buttons" - I remembered that my surrogate grandmother, the late Dorothy Dowd (really my Great Aunt) served many years as the Treasurer of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, in Northwest, D.C. Indeed, it was there, probably through her auspices, that my parents first met. Anyway, one of Aunt Dorothy's responsibilities was counting the collection money that was placed into the Shrine's coin boxes by faithful pilgrims from quite literally all over the world. Aunt Dorothy would often replace foreign currency from the collection with its equivalent in U.S. coinage and thereby amassed an impressive collection of foreign coins; sadly, later, when her husband passed away at a young age and she needed money, she would be fleeced by an unscrupulous coin dealer. Noting my youthful enthusiasm for the unusual shapes and styles of the foreign coins, none dated later than 1964, she gave me some that had no resale value, and in that small group of coins, which I just lately remembered, were a handful tokens from various subway and streetcar systems from around the U.S. I imagine a near destitute but ever faithful visitor to the Shrine giving over what little he or she had to the Church for the poor, and further, I imagine my late Great Aunt Dorothy chuckling over the notion that a subway token ended up in her vast collection of exotic coins. And so, in honor of another great lady who like to collect things, we now introduce wine bottle stoppers featuring the "Aunt Dorothy Coin." The bus token below is from Elmira, New York; below it are subway tokens from Philly and NYC, and an Italian coin with a design that really appealed to me...
Mahogany Brown Ebony
Orange Osage Bocote Mahogany Tamarind
Padauk & Maple Striped Ebony Brown Ebony Cherry
New Stoppers featuring Zebrawood, Bubinga, Bocote, Basswood, Wenge, Hard Maple, Poplar and Black Walnut; all have a "Nana Button" up top. $15 each
Zebrawood
Mahogany Bocote Walnut Basswood & Padauk
Santo Domingo Mahogany Marblewood Maple Maple
Padauk & Mahogany Purpleheart Tulipwood Cocobolla
Padauk and Mahogany Maple Maple Mahogany
Ebony Cocobolla Mahogany Striped Ebony
Cherry Lignum vitae............................................... Mahogany
Lignum Vitae Mahogany Tulip Wood Mahagany and Padauk
Osage Orange Spalted Maple Mulberry Tulipwood w/Wenge Rock Maple
Poplar and Padauk Fossilized Shark tooth on Tulipwood