A bottle is a glass container used for holding liquids. Bottles are usually made from glass but can also be made of other materials such as porcelain, ceramic, and plastic. They are often decorated with engravings and colors to promote a specific product or company. Bottles are usually cylindrical in shape and may have a neck or mouthpiece for drinking. Bottles can be curved, flattened, or square in shape. They can be used for a wide variety of purposes, including holding beverages, perfumes, and medicines. Bottles can also be filled with flowers, plants, or animals to be displayed as decorations.
The word bottle is derived from the Latin botella meaning “small cup”; this word is related to the English word bourn. Early bourns were small cups or bowls that were used to store and transport liquids such as water, wine, milk, and beer (Kendrick 1968). They were typically made of finely ground flints, a material referred to as calcined flints, which provided a silica source for glassmaking.
Bottles were originally produced by blowing hot glass over a block to give them a symmetrical form. This was a slow, labor intensive process. Later, bottle production was aided by the use of a parison mold that acted as a measuring device for the expanding liquid being blown into it from the glass pot below. This allowed a large number of bottles to be produced quickly and with relatively little manual labor. The bottle produced by this method is often characterized by ghost seams and meandering mold lines – see the Machine-made bottles portion of the Bottle Dating pages for more information on how to recognize these.
Other methods of bottle production included the use of a French half-post and German half-post, as well as the free-blown or hand-made bottle. The latter was a technique in which the initial gather of glass at the end of the blowpipe was dipped into the pot to apply a second layer of glass without completely covering the first gathering. This is often referred to as a double-dipped bottle in collector jargon.
In modern times, bottle feeding has been shown to lead to many health problems for infants such as a restricted diet, poor chewing skills, food refusal and iron deficiency anemia. Prolonged use of the bottle can also cause speech problems and behavioral issues. It is therefore important to encourage breastfeeding and avoid prolonged bottle feeding (Safer et al. 2001).
Bottle caps and closures are typically made of metal or plastic. A cap can have a screw thread or a yoke-type gripper (see the Closures & Caps page for more information). Bakelite is an example of an early thermosetting plastic that was widely used as a bottle and jar closure from 1927 to about 1970.