Important Thomas Family Wine Collecting Archive

September 17, 2011 Maryland Auction

Lot #: 361

Price Realized: $5,750.00 (Price includes 15% buyer's premium).

Important Thomas Family Wine Collecting Archive, 19th and early 20th century, most material dating between 1840 and 1900, this well-preserved archive paints an intimate portrait of nineteenth-century vintage wine collecting, as practiced by Dr. John Hanson Thomas and his son, Douglas Hamilton Thomas. Purchasing vast quantities of wines, notably madeira, port, and brandy, from important mid-Atlantic stocks and estate auctions, the Thomas family meticulously documented their acquisitions. This lot features wine auction catalogs dating from 1841 to 1910, mostly from Baltimore firms. Also represented is a large quantity of wine tags and labels from consumed bottles, including a label fashioned by Douglas H. Thomas for a bottle of Thomas Jefferson Whiskey. Other labels describe bottles consumed from Baltimore's Patterson and Ridgely family stocks. This archive also includes wine-related receipts, notably a circa-1800 list of Madeira imported by wine merchants. Lastly, correspondence with individuals selling wine, including John A. Washington of Mount Vernon, John Ridgely of Hampton, J. P. Morgan, and H. D. Blair, makes up another large portion of this archive. Well preserved and featuring hundreds of individual items, this lot offers a unique archive of one elite nineteenth-century Baltimore family's obsession with wine. In various conditions.