BOTTLES 101         

      Antique enthusiasts for decades have overlooked an essential portion of historical artifacts that can be found almost anywhere, even in your own backyard!  This is a brief introduction to locating, identifying, and collecting antique bottles. 

 Did you know almost all liquid packaging up to the 1950's was in glass?  

      There is a HUGE variety of glass containers ranging in many colors and/or embossing; bottle collection has many niches which are oriented around specific types such as whiskey, flasks, bitters, milk bottles, soda bottles, inks, foods, perfumes, meds or cures, pontil, free blown, mold blown, machine made, and reproductions!  To collect them all would fill a Victorian mansion as a well known bottle collector Charles Gardner experienced!  Therefore it is important to find a niche that suites your interests and tastes, each niche has SO much variety that to collect every type will take a life time of great adventures and memories.     

      As you may have already discovered, Ebay is a wonderful place to find many common and  rare bottles alike; some that you may have already spent years pursuing, some you might already have on your shelf.  Maybe you've recently fallen victim to the "bottle fever" and everything is new and exciting.  Perhaps you are a new collector fresh from a dig with a beautiful new  treasure wondering about its history and value? 

      To start there are two very important terms known to most collectors.  Known as A.B.M. & B.I.M., they are the first break in the field.  The pioneer diggers & collectors noticed that some bottles they dug had mold marks or seams that ran all the way up the bottle through the lip, others had marks or seams that stopped before the lip.  A little research found that up until 1903 bottles where hand made, blown in a mold with lung power and then hand finished.  In 1903 a machine that completely automated the process was introduced to the market, and needless to say many artesians where out of a job!   These later bottles came to known as Automatic Bottle Machine, or A.B.M. bottles, and their seams run all the way up. The early hand formed bottles came to be known as Blown In Mold, or B.I.M. bottles.    Also known to collectors is B.I.M.A.L., which stands for Blown In Mold Applied Lip.  Around the late 1880's bottle makers started "tooling" the lip of the bottle, or in other words reshaping the top of glass of the body of bottle into the lip.  Prior to this an extra piece of glass was applied to the body to be used to form the lip.  Although all blown bottles can be considered B.I.M., bottles made with the applied piece of glass are known to collectors as B.I.M.A.L., as the applied lip makes the bottle more desirable because it is cruder and older.  Tooled bottles, with out the extra glass are know as B.I.M..   From B.I.M. we break off into even more categories. 

      Very early bottles pre 1800 until approximately the 1850's have no mold or seam marks and were free blown without the use of a mold for the initial body of the bottle, these are referred to as freeblown, and some where rolled on or paddled with a wooden plank to shape the bottle.   These bottles come in a variety of shapes and sizes and sometimes require an expert eye to be identified from later bottles and reproduction art glass. During this time a solid cylinder also came into use that a glob of glass was placed or dipped in and then blown for initial shape.  Bottles made in this fashion always have the characteristic over blown shoulders, where the shoulders of the bottle look as if there slightly rolling out over the rest of the body.  Mostly black glass, (a dark almost black color glass), they are usually easy to identify by there crudeness although they can be mistaken for later bottles.  From here we expand into different molds, 2 or 3 piece hinge molds, turn molds and press molds.  Molds came into use sparingly by the 1820's, and by the 1850's or so everything was mold blown.  All hand made bottles incorporate some sense of individuality, where as A.B.M. bottles are usually very similar to the next.   Non A.B.M. bottles have to many different characteristics to list here, from different lip styles and seed bubbles, to the importance of the glass works that manufactured the bottle.

      Now to talk briefly on a characteristic called the pontil, hopefully to try and help clear up some confusion on e-bay.  Early bottles manufactured before the 1850's almost always have a pontil.  Some later bottles may also have one, as do some art glass wears.  A.B.M. bottles or bottles with a seam or mold mark all the way through the lip do not have a pontil.  A rough circle called a machine scar found on the bottom of A.B.M. bottles is not a pontil.  There are several different kinds of pontil found on earlier bottles. 

     The first is a "Rough Pontil" or "Open Pontil" which can be identified by a circle of glass found on the base of a bottle.  Usually protruding from base 1/16 of an inch or so but sometimes just a rough circle of what looks like broken glass, these types of pontil are sharp and can sometimes off set how the bottle sits.  They often look like a glass tube protruding from the base.  This is actually how they were made, a glob of glass on the end of the craftsman's Punty rod or blow pipe, (the tool used for blowing the glass or gather into bottle form), was adhered to the base to hold the bottle while the neck and lip were formed.  A drop of water (called wetting off) was then dropped on to the glop causing it to fracture and break clean from the bottle.  The part that was left on the bottle is what we call the pontil. 

      Also known as a "Rough Pontil" is the "Solid Iron Bar Pontil" which is also called a "Sticky Ball Pontil" or "disc pontil" by some collectors.  Not to be confused with the "Iron Pontil" this pontil mark was made when a solid iron punty instead of the blow pipe was dipped in glass and adhered to the bottom of the bottle.  A depression with chips of glass or layer of extra glass identify this mark.  This mark and the "Open Pontil" mark are both found on bottle's up until the 1850's or so.

      2nd is the "Iron Pontil", also known as a "Improved Pontil" where a iron rod was adhered to the hot glass while the lip and neck were shaped.  As the glass started to cool this rod would slip off, leaving behind iron residue.  This mark can be identified as a rusty circle or a black or gray circle on the bottom of the bottle although sometimes no residue is left.  In this case only a well trained eye can positively identify the mark.   This and the miss named graphite pontil mark where both used in the period between 1850 and 1865 or so.

(there is some debate as to how this pontil was removed)

      3rd is the "Graphite Pontil" which is very similar to the iron pontil except a white residue is found coating most of the base of the bottle.  It has been found that the graphite pontil is a iron pontil with either paint or corrosion covering the iron.

      4th is the "Sand Chip Pontil".  This mark was made when an Iron type pontil rod was dipped in fine shards of glass dust or sand.  When it was removed from the bottle it left behind lots of little shards of glass or sand which can often be sharp, or other times smooth. Quickly identified it can sometimes be confused with a bottle that was set in broken shards of glass before it cooled.  to tell the difference the pontil bottle will only have shards on the base in the push-up where the bottle doesnt rest, if the base where the bottle sits on the surface has shards on it, it is most likely not a chip pontil.

(No pic available)

      5th is the "Fire Polished Pontil", this mark was made when a bottle was reheated to remove the rough pontil, and takes some practice to identify.  Often a bluish tint is left on the base from refiring.  Used in the U.S.A. until the 1840's, in other parts of the world until the 1870's. 

      6th is the "Ground Polished Pontil".  This type was used on expensive wares such as pitchers, vases, decanters, bar bottles and flint glass.  This mark can be identified on a bottle by a slight polished concave on the bottom of the bottle.  After a rough pontil was made it was then ground off and the area highly polished to remove any sign of it.  Usually done to keep people from cutting them self or so the bottle would sit evenly.  This type is most commonly found on bottles that would be used over and over and not every day bottles. This type of pontil has been used through out glass production and is still in use today.  It was most heavily used in the U.S.A. in the period from 1780 to 1890 or so.  The picture is of the base of an early Ohio type free blown green glass vase.

      The 7th and last type of pontil is a "Solid Glass Pontil".  Instead of looking like a tube it looks like a round broken glob or chip.  This type of pontil is almost only found on reproduction and art glass bottles and flasks.  Some very early bottles have this type of pontil.  This pontil can also require a trained eye to recognize.   Used from the 1930's or so up till present day, and rarely in the period from 1780 to 1850.

There are of course many different marks and styles that make up the base of a bottle.  Many of these are mistaken for pontil marks.  After 1860 or so an invention called the snap case came into wide spread use to hold a bottle while being finished.  Similar to a clamp this device had a cup the bottle would sit in and arms that would close around the bottle to hold it.  It made holding the bottle a simple task and less of a complicated skill while also doing away with the pontil.  A snap case seldom left any mark on the bottle at all.  By 1903 the whole process was automated and man had no part in the making of the bottle except mixing the ingredients and pulling levers.  At this time nothing was needed to hold the bottle.

Note:  Although the automatic bottle machine was invented in 1903 many bottle were still blown until the 1920's when the industry completed the switch over.  Many glass houses could not afford the new equipment and eventual went out of business if the did not adapt.  The art of glass blowing became a distant memory by the 1930's.

Some of the marks from the period 1865 and beyond that are mixed up with the pontil are mold marks that look like a bulls eye or a dot in the center of the base. A depression in the center of the base added to all bottles so they would sit evenly, (looking much like a solid iron bar or ground polished pontil to the untrained eye), the kick-up, (a large depression in the base) and most commonly mistaken mark, a rough circle of glass called a machine scar found on A.B.M. bottles.  Pictured is a normal non pontil depression and a machine scar.

Sorry for the quality of the pictures.  I spent alot of time getting good pic's but they came out bad anyway when I transferred them to ebay.  Also I planed on writing a much larger review with 150 plus pictures, 40 more pontil pics alone, a very detail section on different lips, molds and glass characteristics and a guide to finding bottles but ebay only allows 10 pics to a guide!  I found this out after many hours of work.  The rest I was going to write is based on explaining the pics as it is very hard to provide a clear description without pictures of many of the topic's.  I will try to continue somewhere else but even in my store I am limited to a certain amount of pictures!

Thank you for your interest and keep on digging!  please visit, New England Glass Works

     Posted 5/25/06 - Revised 9/13/06