FOR A very expensive book on small objects, you could look at Wine Labels 1730-2003, edited and co-authored by John Slater (Antique Collectors' Club £85).

Prof Slater is a past president of the Wine Label Circle, which I think must be a cover for some other goings on as these little silver and enamelled and otherwise crafted labels are really rather an esoteric thrill. This is the first book on the subject since 1947.

Clearly, in days gone by, and why not these days, labels were useful to remind the inebriated drinker of what was in his or her bottles or decanters. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they made a lot of effort manufacturing them in Newcastle, resulting in a quality "unequalled" in the provinces, except perhaps for Dublin.

Lots of them look good, sparkle in the candlelight, mini-markers of history and, like marbles, they are good for swapping.

Pore over the 600 pages and take a deep slug of the thousands of glittering photographs in The Decanter: An Illustrated History of Glass from 1650 by Andy McConnell (Antique Collectors' Club £45). The title makes sense once one learns that, through the centuries, the decanter has been the "leading vessel in the glassmakers' repertoire", and beautiful, various and "undervalued" they are.

The story delves into the very distant past, but gathers pace in 1660 with the coincidence of fine wine from Bordeaux. These days, decanters are apparently undervalued in monetary terms and also undervalued as utilitarian objects. They clean wine of sediment, look good on the table and let wine breathe which, to cut a long story short, will generally "soften" wine and "improve" a less than perfect one.

The author bemoans the fact that "recent changes in social etiquette" have allowed wine bottles to return to the dining table, and tells the story of Lord Cardigan putting an officer on a charge for pouring from a bottle.

The bonus with this book is that it is also an entertaining history of our drinking and, as with alcohol, the history of glass is full of telling legislation.

In 1584 Parliament passed a bill "against the making of glass by strangers and outlandish men".

England's forests were in danger, it took two tons of wood to make one kilogram of glass. Coal saved the forests and that's why the North-eEst became a centre for glassmaking.

We get the pictures of decanters engraved, enamelled, gilded, moulded, cut, etched, coloured and stained. As for cleaning them, there were various methods, one involving horse manure. There's a lot on the technicalities of making and later on of mass production, including Christopher Dresser's involvement.

There are the practical difficulties of making decanters that don't fall over and, in parallel, the problem of a sozzled population that seems to have a peculiar and long-established propensity for collapsing under the influence. The history makes lager louts seem positively traditional.

When we had a population of 3.75m, we imported 100m litres of Bordeaux every year, and that, in cost, was a third of our entire imports, which rather puts the cross channel ferry van man to shame. Walpole, our first Prime Minister, was simultaneously a wine smuggler.

Indeed all classes succumbed, the cartoonist Gillray depicts the Prince of Wales under the table, the general over-indulgence of the great and good was astonishing.

In 1692, Admiral Russell gave a party for 6,000 guests to celebrate a victory over the French. He filled a previously ornamental fountain with punch requiring 25,000 lemons and had it served by boys riding in rosewood boats.

The poor took to gin and opium. In the eighteenth century, it is claimed that the "British aristocracy ranked drinking generally, and after dinner drinking in particular, alongside hunting, gambling and wenching, as life's worthiest pursuits", however, one historian observes that "it does not seem that sobriety and national greatness are necessarily synonymous".

Nor was it just the men, in Georgian times women retired after dinner to hit cordials that were 50pc alcohol. If you follow the traditions of our alcoholic land, then at least make the business more beautiful with a decanter.