Mudlarking in London with Nicola White - A VERY Special Find!

it's Monday the 20th of May I came down to the river this morning I said early to see what the tide had thrown out and I found a few interesting bits and pieces and I'm looking forward to getting back to the studio to do a little bit more investigation so I'm gonna head off the back to studio now the tides coming in so in the meantime whilst I'm doing that have a look and see what I found today and I'll see you later back at the studio a minutes ago I was crouching down if just the right place and saw this little round thing here sticking out of the mud so picked it up felt that it was a button wasn't really expecting there to be anything on the front but there is and in fact it's a really lovely old possibly late 18th century Royal Artillery button here it is see those three cannons sir but I first found one of these I thought it was the other 8 way up and I thought it was three snails I mistake that to you syncretic but turn it up the other way and it is three artillery guns quite easy over here it's not exactly what I'm looking for but I'll pick it up nonetheless here's a little come on we go go ambulance very nice I know a place where he will be very happy with the rest of my little car collection from the River Thames some of you may know how much I would love to find a whole onion bottle well the other day I found the bottom half of one quite a foursome quarter but I've just excavated the top of one so surely that means that I'm due for a whole one soon but this is beautiful I'm going to take it it shows that the neck and some of the top of the bottle so I think kind of use my imagination to put the rest of it in there so I'm guessing there I'm guessing there I might have enough bit soon to make a whole one so that I think would be from this seventeen hundred's such a beautiful shape [Applause] I just picked up this piece of metal out of the mud and I don't know whether it might be just an old piece of industrial metal but if it's my imagination but I'm kind of seeing measuring on it or something you see one cooking about that could be nothing more than a piece of industrial metal but they are that pleased to see that it looks as if there's something on it but I think we're gonna have to wait till I get home before we find out Oh it'd be amazing if it was a ring with it be credible if it was a really old ring with something on it I can hardly wait to find out here we are look hutch is very luckily stumbled upon a coin down here can you actually see it it's not far from the bit of pipestem which probably can see let me zoom in you might see it now big round thing there it is it looks like a one penny let's take a look and see but my guess is that it's probably a George penny moment of excitement I don't know it might be might be Queen Elizabeth no actually it's a Victoria I think yeah there's a Queen Victoria what a great find a Queen Victoria penny let's have a look at the year it looks like a young Victoria okay I'll have to look at the year later I can't I can't quite make it out but that's a nice find at Queen Victoria penny look it's quite a tease isn't it because I can see some of an onion bottle here sticking out for mud you can see that a beautiful kind of top of the bottle there and totally of that so I'm gonna see how much is there it's not entire but I'll make do with a brink of its blood off from around it it looks like a shorter neck on the place I found a little moment ago doesn't it it's my sphere embedded in there that's for sure it's another nice bit of bottle top shall we say maybe there's more there than I thought I need to get this muddled nitro and out it comes there look part of a bottle how cute it's quite a small one it's really nice I'll take that I don't think there's any other bits of glass in there maybe there's the rest of it amazing if the rest of it was there I'll just stick it together okay I'll be back shortly [Applause] hey well guess what everyone the pretty much the rest of the bottle is there so I've taken all the bits and I'm gonna try and stick it together at home this is gonna be a really really exciting project if I can't find a whole bottle I will get a broken wanna stick it together how exciting is this well look I think I've got all the bits out and I'd like to reassure you that it was a broken before I started excavating it's a cute little bottle I think I've got all the bits I've really searched in this mud to make sure there ain't aren't any cool pieces of glass left so I've got everything I can so you can see what it's like right now I'm gonna try and put this bottle together my own little mini onion bottle kit [Music] I must have been feeling pretty good about this really really excited it's gonna be a great challenge [Music] look at this tiny shoe sole just look at that anyone else what is it [Music] hi I'm back in my studio now and I've taken all my finds very carefully out of the bag and laid them out here so let's have a closer look so this is the remains of the bottle which came out of the mud yesterday I'm going to give it a very careful wash off and I'm going to attempt to stick it back together and I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am about this now I'm pretty confident that it's gonna look really good afterwards but first of all I need to give it a very careful clean and I'm hoping that I've got pretty much all of the fragments so that's that now the second thing that I'm extremely excited about is here and I have had a look under my magnifying lamp I don't know if you can actually see here very possibly but I can definitely see the letters F O on there and a few more afterwards but it's very very crusty and so it's going to need to have a careful clean so hopefully it will be revealed to what it says on that ring there's the the neck of the onion bottle but so I'm afraid it's kind of faded into significance for a while whilst I sort this one out because this is what I'm really excited about that out this ring and we'll have a look at the other objects later so quite an array of exciting finds and as you can see the ring is quite delicate I'm a bit nervous about cleaning it to myself as I don't damage it so I have contacted Simon of siphons and tomorrow very kindly he's coming over to show me how to use the electrolysis method for cleaning items such as that ring it's something I wanted to learn how to do for ages actually so this is very well time so he'll be over tomorrow so now I'm going to get on and try and put that bottle together I'm going to give it a wash and try and put it together I can't wait to show him and hopefully if all the pieces are there we'll end up with an onion bottle so let's do it okay so here it is it's been washed so we've got six pieces and I'm hoping that we will get the most of it if not all of it stopped together [Music] [Music] [Music] don't ever look at this beautiful beautiful little which I believe is from The Sentinel dress is absolutely perfect [Music] and here he is the mud lover himself oh my goodness did you see what he's about to do to my little onion bottle I could never do that it's too gorgeous to do that but yes what do you think of my job in restoring it and yeah I think it's fantastic then I bring children restore it in now just need to work out where it came from because it could be English could be Dutch consult an expert just to get the clarification on that but it's definitely a smaller version of a onion bowl there's perfect because they think you know they like quotes about this size no it's like a little choice congratulations it's not fine that I'm Regis thank you very very much I actually found him before it was completely washed out yeah well it was just on its way out so that was real really fortuitous that was so um anyway thank you so much for coming here today and so I've shown you this ring ring here so what are we gonna start with let's start with the ring okay we can use the miniature Isis on this which basically is you're going to run a current through it breach in the low current and that should educate some of the crust that we can then use a fiberglass pin to rubbish rub off any of the crustaceans and then we should go to be a clear picture of what it was just like this made of brass right so what's going on here then so this is called electrolysis right and it's for cleaning things like this which is delicate without damaging them yeah I mean you can't damage him if you put me in for too long but basically this we're gonna run a small current through it using warm water in a Tupperware tub okay you can add some salt now that just helps things along okay you got to dissolve a bit and this is a stainless steel teaspoon you can see how much I've used it's getting quite well so you're stirring all the salts up yeah so and then this is an old phone charger and you got the positive and negative and when you put the artifacts on the other on this crocodile clip yeah then you're basically making the current under the water and that's what then creates the current and in some reason it agitates this and that's what that's what clean it okay so my hope is that the kind of rusty stuff is gonna come off and whatever is written on that ring which is hopefully the meaning of life very it's gonna drop off and reveal the rest of the letter so that oh then it takes off all that what would you call it the crud yeah you cried to build up all those also yeah that will come off and you'll be left with the original yeah I do yeah exciting look at that everyone just look at it and you can see bits flaking off you should a very closely thing tiny little bits or crud just drop off they go a little bit drops off there we want to change your water regularly so bear I'll turn it around so that it doesn't burn one edge more than the other yeah I think what we'll do now we'll just swirl this under the tap okay just to get get some of this stuff off and then once all this is properly cleaned off we can use this fiberglass pin which you can buy it on online and then I use a little bit of water just to help it along it does clean things off I think there's some decoration under this little bit there so right so this is the result and it's great and it does say for a friend on it fantastic for friend so I wonder what friend that was friendship somebody gave their friend a copper ring so it's not great and it's come up really well that electrolysis so I'm definitely use that again so there we are very very happy with that thank you very much Simon for helping me do that you're welcome me for a friend so fits now reshaping that's a whole different tutorial thank you oh and also you might be in for a bit of a treat later because I have cleaned up the teapot [Music] sighs sticking around there got anything good found people looks excitedly let's see the grand revealing Oh ABC incorporated 28th of October 1862 aerated bread company its company Lewis said that it's brilliant the exact day as well 20 October 1862 a look sigh has actually given me this teapot I may be the moon because I was actually quite envious of it but I'm going to try I'm making tea Earl Grey tea is gonna be the old teapot challenge and probably the last cup of tea that came out of that cup up out of this pot was 400 years ago so [Music] our daily is a lovely cup of Rosaline their service [Music] still put be free after leashes that you found [Music] that's come a charm sugar one or two Vika I'll have I'll have one place is rather small cup - there you are very much [Music] well ladies and gentlemen in the excitement of these finds from yesterday I almost forgot about my other items and it wouldn't be fair to miss them out so very quickly here is the neck of the onion bottle which I found this coin here which is actually a Victorian coin the Royal Artillery button here the child's shoe sole and this little truck they have somewhat faded a little in the shadow of the beautiful onion bottle and the ring and you know I was so blessed by the River Thames on this outing because I've had the pleasure of watching the gradual revelation of the lettering on this ring for a friend but really I have to say the absolute jewel in the crown is this beautiful bottle it really was a dream for me to find this little bottle look at it it's so beautiful it's so it's so tiny and it's really like a little onion you can really see why it's called no new bottle I think it might be a mallet onion bottle and I believe it dates to the early 1700 but I have googled and tried to find a photo of a similar one as small as this and I haven't found anything so if any of you out there are bottle experts I'd be very grateful for your advice on this but it really is solutely wonderful I can't tell you how thrilled I am so that's one of my dream finds now so I'm gonna have to move on to my next dream find which is to find an entire which bottle like a Bella wine bottle so that's the next one but I am perfectly happy with that for the time being and it's gonna take a lot to top that thank you very much for watching and thank you for your comments and feedback as usual how super week bye bye [Music] [Music] you

Channel: nicola white mudlark - Tideline Art

Views: 167,567

Rating: 4.9398928 out of 5

Keywords: london mudlark, mudlarking london, london mudlarking, uk mudlark, mudlarking, mudlark, tideline art, tidelineart, nicola white, nicola white mudlark, metqal detecting, thames mudlark, thames mudlarking, mudlarking thames, mudlarking in uk, london history, onion bottle, thames finds, mudlarking finds, onion bottle thames, royal artillery

Id: 4k4KTIBLp2w

Length: 23min 19sec (1399 seconds)

Published: Sun May 26 2019