Silver Malmsey Wine Label, 1800 Elizabeth Morley
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Wine Label - Malmsey; Cut-cornered Rectangle - London 1800 by Elizabeth Morley - 4.2cm wide; 7g - PB/4590
This attractive George III silver wine label is incised and blackened with the scarce name of MALMSEY.
The bottle ticket takes the popular cut-corner rectangular form and hangs from a chain. It was made in London by the lady silversmith Elizabeth Morley at the turn of the 18th/19th centuries and remains in fine condition.
Malmsey is a dark, rich, fortified Madeira wine. Also known as Malvasia, it is the sweetest of the Madeira wines. Malmsey is famous for being the wine most favoured by Sir John Falstaff in Shakespeare's Henry IV ("that errant malmsey-nose knave") and The Merry Wives of Windsor and also for being the wine in which the Duke of Clarence drowned himself in 1478 on learning of his impending execution for the crime of high treason against the king - his brother King Edward IV.
