This is one of about thirty papiers collés (pasted papers) which Picasso made at the end of 1912. They were his first collages, and they mark a new development in his work. The bottle is composed of a piece of newspaper cut from Le Journal of 3 December 1912. Stencilled letters spell out ‘OLD / JA / R’ – shorthand for Old Jamaica Rum. Like collage, where a real thing is stuck onto a picture, this use of letters and words signalled a new approach to reality: instead of carefully copying an image, an artist could instead write its name on the picture.