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.

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.

[18] One variation of the impossible bottle takes advantage of pine cones opening as they dry out.