9

“

An honourable exception is the Imp (club type) which has a good screw and is

relatively simple to operate. Unfortunately, the poor finish of the plastic

moulding on my sample suggests it wouldn

‟

t age well.

”

His favorite was the

Screwpull.

The Perfect Extractor

With all of those favorable reviews, who would not consider using a club type

corkscrew on a regular basis? In the following pages we will look at a rather

large number of these corkscrews residing in various collections. If you have one,

try it. You decide if it is the Perfect Extractor. Rednutt Sherry says it is:

So who made this type of corkscrew first? I posed that question to Italian

collector Luciano Bottoni and got this response:

“

While the French

„

Club

‟

is of standardized production, the Italian ones were

made for a long time by many different artisans in different parts of the country

but especially in the northern part of Italy. They were made throughout the 19

th

and 20

th

century and they are still in production today.

Early examples sport an Archimedean worm and the thread in the shaft is

rounded. The best were produced in boxwood which is one of the hardest woods

around and grows very slowly. The frame was individually worked on a lathe.

Their beauty depends on the craftsmanship of the artisan. The turning can be of

very high quality.

The brass covering on some wood double action corkscrews was not born as an

embellishment but as a repair: all hard wood and especially boxwood has a

tendency to split under quick and strong extremes of temperature. In earlier days

the philosophy of

„

use and throw away

‟

was not a common application: thus

anything repairable was repaired at times with beautiful results.

”