Photo by Rick Gush

I ’m looking for wine-coloured bottles with rounded bottoms , like this one , for an upcoming project .

I ’ve got a newfangled art project , and I need a bunch of older wine-coloured bottleful . I ’m looking for the kind that has a rounded bottom . These were most commonly used in the old days to make raffia wrap up flaskful for Chianti and other Tuscan wine-colored , but everywhere in Italy these bottleful were coarse in the 19th and twentieth centuries .

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I have a appeal of lots of dissimilar wrap flasks , orfiasci , as they are cry here . So now I ’m track down around , look for one-time bottleful . I print up some handbill with a pic of the kind of bottle I want , and I spent a few hour passing out the circular yesterday . On my last call I hit a likely jackpot .

Mario ’s shed is packed with wine bottle like these .

Ten year ago , when I first arrived in Italy , I saw an old guy who had a bigDahlia imperialisnear his garden shack , and I used my unintelligible Italian to ask him for a cutting . ( Dahlia imperialisis a stunningly marvelous Dahlia pinnata that grows from 15 to 30 metrical unit and blooms in the fall . ) He was Mario , and we sort of became Friend . I go away over to his shack a issue of time , and we would drink his horriblehomemade wineand sometimes I ’d bring salami to eat .   He always mouth Genovese , and I barely speak Italian , but we had a nice friendly relationship and he rattle on with a hundred story of which I understood perhaps three .

Wine bottle

I’m looking for wine bottles with rounded bottoms, like this one, for an upcoming project.

He had a bunch of grapevine growing around his K and lots of bottle of different wines that he had made , and he be intimate explaining the whole deal to me . I ’m always a mark for anyone who want to speak about their garden … no matter the language .

I spend the Nox in the infirmary a few weeks ago , and one of the other guys in the room with me was Mario . Unfortunately , I heard he die a few days later .

As the last stop on my feeding bottle booklet passing enlistment yesterday , I stopped by Mario ’s hutch , conceive perhaps to give my commiseration to his chum who lives in the big star sign up front . There was a unexampled guy in the garden area , and I convert him to spread the gate . After a few minutes chat about Mario , I asked if perhaps I could get another carving of the Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree dahlia , and I also asked about the onetime bottle . Turns out Mario ’s whole back shed is pile with older bottles stacked in the dark .

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The raw guy get me take three old wrapped wine-coloured bottles from near the doorway where there was a bit of day , and they were almost but not quite the stylus I was hoping for , but still nerveless . I made a appointment to get back this good afternoon with a flashlight , and I ’ll get to search the whole shed . How cool is that ? I ’ll plausibly have fuss catch some Z’s tonight , I ’m so aroused .

So , ciao , Mario . I was happy to see you one last time , and I very much revalue being capable to scrounge around in your wine nursing bottle shed .

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