The main products were stoppers for jars and bottles. There seems to have been a high level of diversity in the size and quality available. The household accounts of Petworth House (a stately home in Sussex) over a period of fifty years from 1755 show payment for quart, pint, best long, best long pint, best white, short long and fruit corks. These were all acquired from a firm of London corkcutters. They were supplied in canvas bags and paid for by the gross (or the dozen in the case of fruit corks.) A writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1736 complained that on trying to buy a gross of best corks, he was offered some that were “indifferent such as I would not have bottled up water gruel with.” On being challenged, the corkcutter returned “you didst not ask for good corks before” and brought out some fit for use. “Beyond these he had his very good corks, his fine corks, his superfine… seven degrees in all.”
In the 1890s the main corks produced were small “vials” for medicine bottles and even smaller “homeopathics”. There was also a large market for brewers’ bungs and shives and bungs for pickle jars. Corks were produced for soft drinks, such as ginger beer and lemonade (until the introduction of the glass stopper bottle), but most wine corks were imported, re-sorted for size and quality, and then kept for home use or exported around the world.
Until the development of other containers, bottles and pots were used for many substances and all had to be sealed with corks. The photos on this page are of containers of Crosse and Blackwell products. George Lockyer’s firm in St. Giles, London probably had the contract to supply corks to this important provider of sauces and other foodstuffs.
Other handcrafted cork products were swimming aids, floats for fishing nets, boxes for transporting wine, discs for applying smoothing and polishing agents by machine (e.g. in the cut glass industry), bath mats and components in dress items (footwear, bustles and hats). Cork scraps were used to stuff upholstery. From the 1860s cork was combined with other substances to produce floor coverings. By the end of the 1800s, cork waste was even being imported in order to supply the expanding linoleum industry. Raw cork was used for ornamental purposes in gardens. Machines enabled the production of cork paper for cigarettes, linings for helmets, cork socks for the footwear industry, insulation materials and cork rings for bottle stoppers. The invention of cork agglomerate where tiny particles could be adhered together to produce a variety of forms reduced the need for cutting skills.
