Impossible bottle

Other common objects include fruits, matchboxes, decks of cards, tennis balls, racketballs, Rubik's Cubes, padlocks, knots, and scissors.

[3] Bottles with minor distortions and soft tints are often chosen to hide the small details of the ship such as hinges on the masts.

Alternatively, with specialized long-handled tools, it is possible to build the entire ship inside the bottle.

These are quite large and expensive models: the bottles (intended to be displayed upside down, with the neck resting on a small pedestal) measure about 45 cm.

God-in-a-bottle, or God-in-the-Bottle, is a symbolisation of the crucifixion of Jesus through the placing in a bottle of carved wooden items, including a cross and often others such as a ladder and spear [of Longinus].

[7][15] Richard Power's 1964 novel The Land of Youth, set in a fictional version of the Aran Islands,[16] mentions an outcast who uses driftwood for what is "known to generations of children as God-in-a-bottle.

"[17] Although the Offaly Independent says that in the 1970s "almost every pub in Tullamore" displayed a bottle,[18] by the 21st century they were largely unknown in Ireland.