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My crew found an old bottle.
Jun. 24th, 2017 04:46 pmSo, we're excavating away up here on the Gold King project, building an improvement to the water-treatment plant. The plant is located smack-dab on top of the old mining town of Gladstone, Colorado. Today my foreman handed me this old bottle -- & now I'm obsessed with learning more about it.
Happily, I'm not alone. There are superb internet resources for dating old bottles. I'm mostly using the Society for Historical Archaeology's Historic Glass Bottle Identification & Information Website. But I'm not doing well with my bottle.
Here's what I know. It's a round/cylindrical bottle made of clear glass, approximately 6 1/2" tall & with a diameter of approximately 2 1/2". It has a very short neck. Two side seams run from right under the top (the "finish") of the bottle down onto the base. Since the side seams don't go up onto the finish, the SHA website says this is likely "'mouth-blown' or 'hand-made' and typically date prior to 1915, though could date back to at least 1800. The vast majority of U. S. manufactured, mouth-blown molded bottles were made between about 1820 and 1915."
The finish seems to be a "tooled finish", which means the top of the bottle was shaped with tools but no extra glass was blobbed onto the neck after the bottle was blown. The SHA website says: "The changeover from applied finishes to tooled finishes appears to have been in the 1880s, with a large majority of bottles produced after 1890 exhibiting this finishing method. Hand tooled finishes largely disappeared between 1910 and the early 1920s with the ever increasing dominance of fully automatic bottle making machine." So this bottle was likely manufactured some time between 1880 & 1920. But then, the SHA website says, "As a general statement about the transition from applied to tooled finishes, it is clear that the smaller the bottle the earlier that tooled finishes were first used." My bottle is fairly small, so it could be older.
There is another seam around the base of the bottle, on the side but near the bottom. I can't see a "pontil" scar on the base of the bottle, which means it very likely dates to after the Civil War.
The seam around the base means the bottle was produced in a "cup-bottom mold". These normally date to between 1860 & 1890.
The bottle has six mold-formed air venting marks on its shoulders. SHA: "Mouth-blown bottles with air venting marks typically date from, or after, 1885-1890."
The base of the bottle has the raised outline of an "H" with a "3" inside each section of the "H".
I'd really like to find out what the "H33" means!
Happily, I'm not alone. There are superb internet resources for dating old bottles. I'm mostly using the Society for Historical Archaeology's Historic Glass Bottle Identification & Information Website. But I'm not doing well with my bottle.
Here's what I know. It's a round/cylindrical bottle made of clear glass, approximately 6 1/2" tall & with a diameter of approximately 2 1/2". It has a very short neck. Two side seams run from right under the top (the "finish") of the bottle down onto the base. Since the side seams don't go up onto the finish, the SHA website says this is likely "'mouth-blown' or 'hand-made' and typically date prior to 1915, though could date back to at least 1800. The vast majority of U. S. manufactured, mouth-blown molded bottles were made between about 1820 and 1915."
The finish seems to be a "tooled finish", which means the top of the bottle was shaped with tools but no extra glass was blobbed onto the neck after the bottle was blown. The SHA website says: "The changeover from applied finishes to tooled finishes appears to have been in the 1880s, with a large majority of bottles produced after 1890 exhibiting this finishing method. Hand tooled finishes largely disappeared between 1910 and the early 1920s with the ever increasing dominance of fully automatic bottle making machine." So this bottle was likely manufactured some time between 1880 & 1920. But then, the SHA website says, "As a general statement about the transition from applied to tooled finishes, it is clear that the smaller the bottle the earlier that tooled finishes were first used." My bottle is fairly small, so it could be older.
There is another seam around the base of the bottle, on the side but near the bottom. I can't see a "pontil" scar on the base of the bottle, which means it very likely dates to after the Civil War.
The seam around the base means the bottle was produced in a "cup-bottom mold". These normally date to between 1860 & 1890.
The bottle has six mold-formed air venting marks on its shoulders. SHA: "Mouth-blown bottles with air venting marks typically date from, or after, 1885-1890."
The base of the bottle has the raised outline of an "H" with a "3" inside each section of the "H".
I'd really like to find out what the "H33" means!
