Forty years ago antiques were regarded as items over 100 years old. Most people looked in Antique shop windows, but few entered unless they had a small fortune to spend on a special piece. You certainly wouldn't have entered the shops in jeans with a couple of kids in tow. Interest therefore tended to be restricted to the elite and rich. In the intervening years the trade has changed but where is it going now?

An essay by Benjamin Franklin. Remember that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labour, and goes abroad, or sits idle one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the onle expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides. Remember that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie in my hands, after it is due, he gives me the interest, or so much as I can make of it during that time. this amounts to a considerable sum where a man has good and large credit, and makes good use of it.

When I was a child the bottles we got our 'pop' in had a 3d deposit on them. Does anyone know when this system stopped. Perhaps it could be reintroduced.
Collecting bottles used to be a good way of supplementing ones pocket money.

Principles of Design. - XXIV.By Christopher Dresser, PH.D., F.L.S., ETC. - Glass - from Cassell's Technical Educator.When speaking of earthenware, I insisted upon the desirability of using every material in the easiest and most natural manner, and I illustrated my meaning by saying that glass had a molten condition as well as a solid state, and that while in the molten condition it can be "blown" into forms of exquisite beauty. Glass-blowing is an operation of skill, and an operation in which natural laws come to our aid, and I cannot too strongly repeat my statement that every material should be "worked" in the most simple and befitting manner; and I think that our consideration of the formation of glass vessels will render the reasonableness of my demand apparent.