A hollow vessel of wood, glass or leather, with a narrow mouth, for the conveyance and holding of liquids. In the Oriental nations, skins are used for this purpose; in Europe and America, bottles of glass of various kinds are employed – for example, those for wine, porter and cyder. Bottles are also made of metal, especially for spirits; the latter have a cork stopper.
The earliest man-made bottles were probably of soda lime glass, the raw material for which is sodium carbonate (soda ash). The plants growing in the Mediterranean and Middle East have the property that, when burned, they yield this mineral. This material is a flux, lowering the melting point of the raw glass materials and thus making it possible to shape them into useful forms. The basic process of converting the soda and lime into glass is called core forming, which involves blowing molten glass onto a wooden or metal table. This table was sometimes wax or oil coated for lubrication to help the glass “stick” to it and be rolled into shape by a marver, with the final form secured by either a pontil rod or snap case tool.
Glass makers also decolorized their glass by adding certain substances, such as selenium or manganese dioxide to the batch. This helped to neutralize the iron and other impurities in the sand and produce colorless glass. The term glassmakers’ soap is sometimes applied to such decolorizing agents.
Many of the descriptions on this site use specialized terminology, much of it collector based or originated, which may be confusing to those not familiar with these terms. For the definition of some terms, see the Glossary. Other definitions are specific to this website and may be found on its respective pages, for example, see the Bottle Finishes & Closures page.
Some of these bottle-related terms are easier to understand with a picture than a written description. Click pictures to enlarge. Bottles with keyed bases, for example, have a base mold seam that arches up in the center or “jog” of the bottle; click picture to enlarge. A keyed mold is indicative of a bottle made prior to about 1860, particularly when accompanied by a pontil mark superimposed on the mold seam.
Fire grenade bottles were filled with carbon tetrachloride and thrown into fires to extinguish them; they are often identified by the ring on the neck of the bottle where the carbon tetrachloride would vaporize (see picture to enlarge). See also the Miscellaneous Bottles typology page.