Blue Bottle Tree

Although glass was made in the 9 Century A.D. in northern Africa, hollow glass bottles began appearing much earlier around 1600 B.C. in Egypt and Mesopotamia and clear glass was invented in Alexandria around 100 A.D.  Tales began to circulate that spirits could live in bottles - probably when people heard sounds caused by wind blowing over bottle openings.  They thought that roaming night spirits would be lured into bottles placed around entryways and trapped and that the morning light would destroy them.

It seemed to me that bottle trees were a southern thing and that they were a bit tacky but to someone with car lot flags on her deer fence...can anything be too tacky?  Nowadays, bottle trees have blatantly crossed over from being tacky to being "in".  They are often used as interesting garden ornaments that sparkle in the sun.  Bottle trees are even appearing in upscale gardens and it is my understanding that they made an appearance at the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show in London.  

Most bottle trees consist of bottles on sticks.  The "sticks" can be real ones on a dead tree, rebar like mine, or even an upended pitch fork.  Your creativity is the only restraint when it comes to creating a bottle tree.  Many feature bottles of many colors, but the blue bottles are considered "best".

Psychological studies reveal that blue is a universally relaxing, calming color.  Blue glass can be made from adding copper oxides to molten glass, but for over five thousand years the most widespread colorant has been cobalt, a shiny, gray, metal found in copper and nickel ores.  The oldest ingots of cobalt glass were recovered from Minoan shipwrecks dating from as long ago as 2700 B.C.  I love cobalt blue glass and chose it for my bottle tree.

Some of this information gleaned (with permission) from: http://www.felderrushing.net/HistoryofBottleTrees.htm

See some other bottle trees at: http://www.felderrushing.net/BottleTreeImagess.htm