T he fifth Earl of Bedford was recorded as purchasing several hogsheads of "Shably" for his cellar in 1658, while at the same time investing in 12 dozen bottles to accommodate it.

Even Samuel Pepys felt it worthy of recording that in 1663 he visited "the Mitre" to see his personal bottles being filled.

The first verifiable mention of domestic bottle production seems to have been something of a catch-all, when in 1632 Sir Robert Mansell acquired the sole patent for making "broade glasses, looking glasses, bottles or vessells made of glass of any fashion, stuffe, matter or metal whatsoever". Before the century ended, there were 38 bottle houses in the Britain, producing two million bottles each – one at a time.

It is perhaps fair to mention that while the earliest "mass-produced" bottles were free-blown "shaft and globes", a sort of balloon with a long neck, a step towards continuity and speed was developed with the advent of the so-called onion bottle, a short and squat version, when a cup-shaped wooden mould was developed to enable blowers to produce a consistent size and shape – but not thickness.

Still, in spite of this seemingly rudimentary advance, two million hand-crafted bottles seems a gargantuan amount. They were not cheap, either; the Earl of Bedford paid 3s 6d for a dozen plain ones, but the application of a circular seal bearing his crest came at a premium 5s a dozen; as a status symbol and to prevent theft, this device was considered worthwhile, even when you consider what an unholy equation alcohol, brittle glass and merrymaking can be.

The Earl's predecessor the second Duke suffered the loss or breakage of 19 dozen bottles at the banquet to celebrate his being made a Knight of the Garter.

The earliest existing sealed bottle is marked for John Jefferson and dated 1652, although a much earlier bottle, for "CBK 1562", is mentioned in an early polemic as being unearthed in Chester in 1939. Alas, this seems to have gone the way of many of the Earl of Bedford's bottles, and is now lost to time.

Practicality rather than beauty inspired the next advance in the shape of the wine bottle, when the "onion" was flattened to produce an oval "bladder" shape, one with a smaller foot that allowed the storage of more bottles per square foot when stood upright on cellar shelves, as was the custom during a period when gentleman of a certain stature tended to entertain in their private cellars.

All later changes were equally subtle; the "mallet" was a sort of squat, more cylindrical shape, but with a longer, more defined neck, which neatly provided the transition towards the cylinder shaped bottles that came when it became the norm to store horizontally.

By the end of the 18th century and into the 19th, the cylinder was the shape of preference – and here, perhaps, the transition into sameness and mass-production finally arrived, with the advent of a three-piece iron mould patented by Henry Ricketts of Bristol.

This arguably provided much less interesting vessels – but wholly more predictable ones for those who were more interested in the contents, rather than the bottle.