Where Should I Start? Perhaps 100 B.C.?

 

Antique Glass Bottles

    Wow! My first official blog post for TheVintageVixenShop! While deciding what to cover in this first post, I thought it probably best to just go back to the beginning, which brings us to the beginning of TheVintageVixenShop. I mentioned finding the box of antique glass bottles in my introduction and I will just share a litttle bit of what I learned in my research.

    Glass blowing and bottle making have been practiced by humans since almost forever, however, like everything else, the process and technique has changed a bit as time went by and new technologies became available. By understanding when certain technology was being used we can determine approximately when a piece of glass was produced. There are several features of the bottle that we can observe and use to find its approximate age. The features you need to be aware of are what is referred to as mold seams, the base of the bottle, and its lip, or finish.

History of Glass Bottles

    Glass bottles were first created using a blowpipe tool and a man's own hands and mouth. The hot liquid glass is placed at the end of the tool and then held in your hand by the opposite end of the blowpipe, into which one would blow to create the inside shape of the bottle. From there, manipulation of the blowpipe makes creating the shape of a bottle possible. Bottles made using this technique are referred to as "mouth-blown", or free blown.

    All bottles that have been mouth-blown will display certain characteristics which allude to their production process. Mouth-blown bottles will usually be somewhat imperfect, will almost always exhibit evidence of a pontil scar, which is the point of the glass bottle which had been attached to the blowpipe during manufacture and then broken off once the glass had cooled, and will not contain any embossing. To determine if the bottle before you was mouth-blown, first turn it over in your hands; are there any vertical or horizontal lines running down or across the surface of the bottle? If so, these are referred to as mold seams, and indicate that the bottle was not mouth-blown and instead was created in a mold. Next, look at the bottom of the bottle. If your bottle has a pontil scar, this is where you will find it. There are a few different types of pontil scars which can be created on bottles during production. The earliest processes of glassmaking created what is called an open pontil. It resembles a circle usually with somewhat rough edges. Later techniques would also create the iron pontil, improved pontil, and the sand pontil. Mouth-blown bottles may also exhibit what is referred to as a "kick-up" base, which is looks like what is says; it appears the base of the bottle has been kicked in or kicked up. This kind of base is especially common in bottles used for wines.

Parts of a Bottle

Bottle Molds

    The first type of molds used in the U.S. were three-piece molds, and began to be used around the year 1830 and continued through the 1850s. Bottles produced in this mold will have a horizontal mold seam which begins where the body and shoulder of the bottle meet and goes all the way around the bottle. Also visible, there should be two parallel vertical lines along either side of the bottle. However, no mold seams will be present below the shoulder of the bottle.

    The next type of mold used was the separate base plate mold, from the 1850s through the 1880s. These bottles will have a distinct mold seam ridge on the heel of the bottle, but no mold seams on its base. During this same time period, "keyed" and "hinged" molds were also being used. This brings us to another bottle feature to observe to when determing age, the finish, which is the lip or mouth of the bottle. Applied finishes were formed by hand and can be somewhat crude in appearance. "Keyed" and "Hinged" mold bottles usually are finished by what is called sheared or cracked off the lip of the bottle. They also display mold seams on the base of the bottle which split the bottle into two equal and symmetrical halves. In addition to the mold seams on the base, any of the four types of pontil scars can also be seen.

    Post-Bottom Molds were used from the 1840s to 1900s and exhibit a finish that may have been either partially or completely molded. Mold seams will run straight down to and around the heel to become the bottle's side mold seams. A round mold seam will also be centered on the bottle's base.

    Beginning in the 1830s, a new type of finish adorned glass bottles called the "blob-top" and resemebles just what the name suggests. It appears a blob of glass was placed on the neck and manipulated to form the lip of the bottle. True Blobs are said to have been produced in the 1850s, before the invention of the Hutchinson bottle stopper in 1879. These bottles were used primarily in soda water and sometimes for beer. Both body and base embossing were the standard during this time and a blob-top bottle which exhibits no embossing is unusual. With this new bottle finish, new methods of forming a bottle's finish were created as well. Bottle finishes could now be applied (1880-1885), or tooled (1880s-1910s). Blobs were produced in a post-bottom mold and display a ground iron or improved iron pontil.

    The "Codd" bottles produced from 1873 to 1910 didn't see much success in the United States, except in Hawaii. These bottles have applied finishes and a glass marble stopper.

    From 1880-1890, a peculiar type of bottle was produced with a "blob" type finish and a rounded base. These bottles are known as torpedo bottles and were created using a hinge mold. Turn-Mold Bottles were produced from the 1880s to the early 1910s. As a general rule, these bottles will have no embossing on their bases and kick-up bases are commonly used. These bottles will also not feature any embossing on the base, nor will they exhibit evidence of a pontil scar.

    In 1892, Crown Cap bottles were introduced and had eliminated competition from all other finishes by 1920. Applied finishes on these types of bottles indicate foreign manufacture. This paved the way for the invention of the semi-automatic bottle machine which brought the era of mouth and mold blown bottles to a screeching halt. After the 1940s, nearly all bottles are produced by machines and are not nearly as coveted by collectors.

    It is a lot of information to take in but also so fascinating to me! What's your favorite style of antique or vintage glass bottles?