A branded genever bottle from the era when spirits still moved through ports, cellars and bar counters in stoneware rather than glass. Salt-glazing, where salt thrown into the hot kiln fuses to a hard, slightly orange-peel skin, made these bottles tough enough for that life.

Bols traces its Amsterdam distilling back to 1575 and the distillery 't Lootsje, "the little shed", and is regularly described as the oldest distilled-spirits name in the world, producing genever (the Dutch spirit that fed directly into gin) from the 17th century. Marked bottles like this are routinely catalogued in the trade as late 19th to early 20th century Dutch stoneware, which is where this one sits.