Biscuit tins became a thing in Britain after 1860 when the first time the Refreshment Houses Act and the Treaty of Commerce allowed printed paper labels to be affixed to food and beverages. Once colorful, eye-catching labels could be added to food packaging, new processes were developed to make it easier. In 1877, offset lithography was patented that made printing directly onto tin containers of various shapes possible.

Decorative tinware took off, reaching its pinnacle of intricate, creative design before World War I. Lewis Carrol got on the biscuit tin trade in 1891 when manufacturers Barringer, Wallis and Manners contacted him with the idea of making an Alice in Wonderland-themed tin. It would be printed with polychrome scenes based on the illustrations by John Tenniel for Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass and What Alice found there, the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland published in 1871. The original illustrations were printed in black and white, so the idea of a vividly colored version decorating a cookie tin seemed a can’t-miss idea to appeal to children and their parents who had grown up with the books.

Barringer, Wallis and Manners created a tin with a rectangular base , straight sides and rounded corners. The sides and outside of the lid were printed with the labelled illustrations : The Red King Asleep, The Battle Between the Red and White Knights, Alice the White King and the Messenger, Alice and the Fawn, Alice and the Red Queen, Tweedledee & Tweedledum, Humpty Dumpty Offering his Hand to All and The White Knight Sliding Down the Poker.

Tenniel had illustrated Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and found Carroll a micromanaging tyrant, so much so that he refused Carroll’s first request that he illustrate the sequel, and only agreed after he received assurances that he could work at his own pace. Barringer, Wallis and Manners soon found themselves on the business end of Carroll’s control freakery and whiplash-inducing changeability.

The initial offer was Carroll would receive 50 gift tins. He declined on the grounds that it was too many and he’d look like a sellout. Then he changed his mind and wrote them that actually 50 wasn’t enough and he needed 100 to give away to his friends and family, including Alice Liddell, model for Alice in the books. Then he got mad that they included a note that the tin was compliment of “Charles Dodgson,” exposing his real name to the factory workers. Then he got mad that the tin came with a W.R. Jacob & Co label on the inside of the lid. They were the makers of the biscuits so naturally they added a label to that effect, but Carroll’s preferred cookies were Huntley and Palmers so he was offended.

Then he did something so deranged, the poor tin makers must have wanted to choke him. He insisted that the rest of the tins should be sent to his recipients WITHOUT ANY BISCUITS INSIDE. Yes, he was sending gift biscuit tins to friends and family, many of them children, so they would open the lid with all the enthusiasm a kid can muster for cookies, only to find they’d been sent an empty container.

Today the Alice biscuit tins are prized collector’s items, found in museums including the V&A, the Guildford Museum and the Museum of Oxford. One came up for auction on the 17th with a pre-sale estimate of £600 – £900. It sold for £2900 even though there’s small but noticeable areas of damage to the lithography. The story of Lewis Carroll vs. the biscuit tin has made them all the more desirable.

A group of three large lead ingots from a 17th century shipwreck have been discovered at the site of an offshore wind farm 75 miles off the Norfolk coast. The ingots weigh about 155 lbs apiece and were likely exports from Darbyshire mines destined for mainland Europe.

The ingots were discovered at the site of Hornsea 3 in the North Sea which when completed will be the largest offshore wind farm in the world. The seabed of the entire site is being extensively investigated before construction begins. Investigators gather detailed information from soil composition, to environmental data to marine life surveys in order to identify sensitive areas and potential hazards.

Marine investigators discovered the ingots at a depth of 130 feet while scanning the bed for unexploded ordnance. Instead of bombs, they found three lead ingots stacked in their original position on the ship. The wreck itself was gone, with only a few surviving timbers visible under the ingots.

Each ingot is stamped with a different mark – ‘IS’, ‘EB’ and ‘H’ – similar to ingots found on the 1664 wreck of the Dutch East Indiaman Kennemerland off the Shetland Islands. The Hornsea 3 vessel might also have been from the Netherlands.

At the time England produced vast quantities of lead, in particular from Derbyshire and Peak District mines, with much of it shipped across the North Sea from Hull and London to Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The wreck found at Hornsea 3 lies directly on the Hull-Netherlands route.

Lead has been mined in Derbyshire since the Roman period. The Peak District mines were the primary lead producers in Europe during the Middle Ages. By the 17th century, the mining and selling lead was Britain’s second most important trade (wool was number one). It was used in every building from roof to window to pipes, and the raw ore formed into ingots for the export market.

The Hornsea 3 ingots will be housed at the Peak District Mining Museum in Matlock, Derbyshire, which is dedicated to the region’s millennia-old mining history.

A piece of an illicit copper still used to distill whisky two centuries ago has been discovered in the Highlands of Scotland. Volunteers and experts from the National Trust for Scotland discovered the copper alloy piece in an excavation of the remains of a stone structure in Ben Lawers National Nature Reserve (NNR). The tapered collar matches an old illustration that identifies it as “An Gearradan,” the part that connects the lyne arm and the head of a still.

The excavation also unearthed a well-constructed hearth with evidence of burning, a stone-capped drain that run under the floor and a roof support timber that was buried when the walls of the structure collapsed. These features confirm that the small stone building was a bothy, a structure made for the purpose of distilling whisky away from the prying eyes of the law. There are five other known bothies on the Ben Lawers NNR, but this is the only one of them where a piece of the copper still has been found.

Invented by medieval monks in Ireland or Scotland, whisky spread out the monasteries and by the 17th century, private distillation was a central feature of the life of tenant farmers in the Highlands. The first taxes on whisky were imposed by the Scottish Parliament in 1644, but it was in the 1780s when laws were passed requiring all distilleries to be licensed that home stills went underground, or rather, upland into bothies where they could be quickly moved around should excise men get a whiff of them.

Derek Alexander, the National Trust for Scotland’s Head of Archaeology, said: “This is a wonderful example of how archaeology can tell a gripping story of spirit smuggling that would otherwise have been lost to time.

“In the early 19th century, illicit whisky distilling in these hills became a real battle of wits between excise officers and distillers. To find the remains of stills in these upland areas, you need to think like an excise officer. Those who distilled spirit in this bothy will have picked the location carefully to make sure they were well hidden.

“This bothy is well concealed along one arm of the Lawers Burn, nestled in a burn gulley where there’s a slight bend in the burn to shield the site from both upstream and downstream. The people who distilled here knew what they were doing and it’s possible the still was never seized by the authorities.

“If the still had been found by the excise officers, the still would’ve been taken away and destroyed. So, the fact that we’ve found this connecting piece here suggests the still was dismantled in a hurry and its components whisked away by the smugglers as they dispersed. The connecting piece may have been forgotten in the rush and left behind.

“Distillers of illicit whisky would’ve travelled light and left little trace of their activity, and so a find like this is especially rare and exciting. It gives us a glimpse into an activity that was once rife in the hills of Ben Lawers and which was seen by many as an act of community resistance.”

To get an idea of what the intact still would have looked like, this a 3D model of a similar copper still from the same period found in Cortachy. It has a flat bottom to sit inside a brick-built oven, so it was likely housed used inside a permanent structure rather than in a bothy.

A bridge made of gold thread found on the skull of a man who died between 1460 and 1670 is the oldest example of restorative dentistry in Scotland. It long predates the advent of professional dentistry in the 19th century, and given the precious material

The gold ligature was found in the East Kirk of St. Nicholas Kirk in Aberdeen. It was discovered during a 2006 salvage excavation before redevelopment that unearthed the remains of around 900 people and tons more disarticulated bones. The mandible with the ligature was part of the disarticulated skeletal material. The remains from the St. Nicholas Kirk excavation were reexamined as part of a recent study of health trends in Scottish history.

The mandible contained nine teeth still in situ. There was enough of it remaining that researchers were able to determine the individual was male and the wear on the teeth indicates he was middle-aged. He had significant tooth decay on the surviving teeth. The cavities in three of the teeth were so large more than 50% of their crowns were destroyed.

A fine gold wire was wound around his right lateral incisor and his left central incisor. The gap where the missing right central incisor had been was bridged by the wire, held in place by a tight knot on the side of the left central incisor. Analysis of the metal composition found that it is 20 carat gold, created by pulling gold through a graduated series of ever smaller holes. The ends of the wire at the knot are flattened, likely from the use of pliers.

There is a furrow on the tooth left by prolonged wear of the wire, evidence that the ligature was in place for a long time before the person died. The shape of the wire drawn across the gap indicates it was tied there after the tooth was lost, and was probably either intended as an anchor to prevent the loss of the right lateral incisor, or as a bridge on which to install a prosthetic tooth (either a human donor tooth or carved from animal bone).

Attempts at restorative dentistry — the repair of damaged or missing teeth — have been found going back to the Neolithic era. Evidence of fillings and dental drilling have been found in remains going back to as much as 6,,500 years ago. Gold wires used as dental ligatures have been found in mummified remains from Old Kingdom Egypt, but appear to have been placed after death as part of the mummification process. The earliest confirmed ligature bridge meant to restore function (rather than as a cosmetic replacement or post-mortem ritual to make the body complete again) dates to Ptolemaic Egypt (303-30 B.C.).

By the Middle Ages, some medical treatises recommended the use of gold or silver wire to stabilize a loose tooth or to fix a replacement tooth into place, but oral care in general was barely touched upon in medical literature. It wasn’t until 1530 that the first dentistry book was published in Germany. Between the limited expertise available to people and the expense necessary to secure precious metals for oral care, dental ligatures on human remains before the 17th century are rare finds, and only a handful of gold ones are known from Portugal and France.

The study authors believe this fine gold wire was installed by the jeweler who made it, although it could have been sourced separately and placed by a barber, barber-surgeon, dentatore, itinerant tooth-drawer or general community healer, all of whom offered some forms of dental treatment before the advent of professionally qualified dentists in the 1860s. They weren’t so adept at the kind of fine-tuned wire knotting work seen in this repair, however.

For certain ailments, specialist materials or appliances were required. As is seen in this case, gold alloy wire was, and still is, a preferred material in restorative and conservative dentistry due to its resistance to corrosion and tarnishing and biocompatibility. Given the materials involved a 20-carat gold, silver and copper alloy, a goldsmith was most likely sought out to craft and possibly even fit the ligature. Between 1460–1670 CE, at least 22 goldsmiths were operating in Aberdeen. Any number of these craftsmen were likely capable of producing a simple gold wire (as described above) and creating the observed tightening knot.

Of the 100 individuals that were excavated from inside the East Kirk of St Nicholas that dated to the Early Modern period, the individual presented here was the only one with clear evidence of dental work. The rarity of this find indicates that such procedures were out of reach for most of the inhabitants of Early Modern Aberdeen. It is likely that the cost of the gold was a barrier to most. It is also possible this individual had this work done elsewhere. Unfortunately, there is no way to be certain of this. […]

Though it was not possible to determine where this individual would have received this treatment, the location of burial (i.e., inside the East Kirk of an affluent parish church) indicates he was a relatively wealthy member of the community. Given the social importance of one’s appearance during the Late Medieval and Early Modern era, as an outward expression of their moral character, it is likely the reasons for undergoing this procedure extended beyond retaining masticatory abilities and oral function.