How many come up for sale each year?

Thirty-nine dealers have listed silver decanter labels on Sellingantiques, and about twenty-three come to market in a year. The archive runs to two hundred and four listings, which makes this a steady trickle rather than a category you sift through in bulk.

Which drink names appear most often?

Sherry leads, in thirty-two titles. Brandy, port, whisky, claret, rum, gin and madeira follow in that order. Behind them sit names that surface only once each: Bucellas, Moselle, Teneriffe, Shrub, Cayenne, Orange, Marsala, Amontillado, Champagne and Hollands. Those one-offs are the ones dealers flag.

Are labels sold singly or in sets?

Singly, for the most part. The plural 'labels' occurs in only twenty-three of two hundred and four titles. Where sets do appear they run to three, four or five, with the largest group recorded being a set of five. Matched pairs turn up as well, and both sets and pairs sit in the upper part of the sampled range.

What period do these labels date from?

The dealers' own dating spans 1750 to 1960. Georgian is the largest group at sixty-seven listings, Victorian next at forty-one, with Edwardian and Regency behind. Only fifty-five listings carry a clean year. The rest are given as Georgian, Victorian, '1800s' or '19th Century', because many dealers date to a period rather than a date. Decade tags are thin: a few from the 1850s and 1860s, a group of six from the 1950s.

Were decanter labels still made after the Georgian era?

Yes. The form carried on long past the Georgian period and well into the twentieth century. This archive holds enamelled labels of the 1950s, a Coronation set, and gilt vine leaves hallmarked 1968.

Do any non-British labels turn up?

Chinese silver appears twice: dragon-form bottle tags of about 1890 and a Hong Kong export set of about 1920. Those are the only non-British origins recorded. Everything else is English or Scottish hallmarked work, with London named most often as the assay town and York, Exeter, Chester, Sheffield, Edinburgh and one Peterhead provincial piece also present.