Collectible Bottles
There are so many kinds of collectible bottles that it may make your head spin when you first start out looking at the different kinds of bottles. If you decide you want to collect bottles you will soon find a collectible bottle type that appeals to you, and then you will be on your way to a great collection. You can then start searching for the collectible bottle of your choice.
Poison Bottles
One of the many kinds of collectible bottles you can collect are poison bottles. These are dramatic collectible bottles which date from the 1870’s to the 1930’s. Since many people were illiterate in those days many people were poisoned by accident. Both the governments of the United States and England passed laws to prevent accidental poisonings.
It was the poison manufacturers themselves who took action as they had found that glass bottles were perfect for transporting their poisonous products to market, and the poison trade had really taken off. What the manufacturers did not only reduced deaths but created an almost irresistible collectible.
The manufacturers made their poison bottles unique and dramatic in color, shape and texture to ensure that the bottles stood out from other bottles on a shelf. Colors like cobalt blue, honey amber, black, emerald and several other shades of green were used to make the bottles distinguishable from other types of bottles. These bottles also had textures that were unique such as latticework, raised ridges, dots, diamonds, horizontal or raised ribbing, or hobnails. Embossed lettering warned, “POISON”, “DEATH”, “POISOUS” or “NOT TO BE TAKEN INTERNALLY”.
Starting in the mid-1800’s the pirate flag’s skull and crossbones was often used on the labels of poison bottles. Then, toward the end of the century, the skull and crossbones were embossed into the bottle. The most famous poison bottle was a bottle in the form of a skull patented in 1894 by Carlton Lewe. This bottle is found in 3 sizes from less than 3 inches to 41/2 inches in height. This bottle often has damage to the nose where the glass is the thinnest.
Early companies did not make a different bottle for each product, instead they attached a different label to identify the contents. Original labels in good condition enhance the value of a bottle.
Milk Bottles
Milk bottles are yet another kind of collectible bottle that is popular to collect. Many vintage and antique milk bottles are quite charming. Milk has been carried and kept in glass for centuries but it is not know when the first milk bottles were used in the United States.
The first dairy cows arrived in the United States in 1611 at the Jamestown colony. The first settlers of the United States knew the value of dairy cow quality milk.
Street merchants first delivered mild to homes in metal or wooden open tubs. These open containers let dirt and bugs get into the milk which created a health problem. People needed and wanted milk but it was not safe to drink impure milk and sometimes people would become sick from it. IN 1856 Doctor Louis Pasteur invented the process we now know as pasteurization, which involved heating and then cooling the milk in the process. This process removed harmful bacteria from the milk, but the problem of packaging still remained until the late 1870’s.
The earliest patented milk bottle is known as the Lester jar because it is named after it’s inventor. This jar was not easy to mass produce and this resulted in limited use of the jar. In 1884 Dr. Harvey Thatcher of Potsdam, New York invented a milk bottle that was a quart size with a glass top that was sealed with a metal clamp. Now the milk industry industry had a safe product that could be delivered in a sealed glass bottle.
Dr. Thatcher continued to make improvements to the way his milk bottles were sealed. Eventually he came up with the paper cap top in the recessed lip of the bottle. This improvement reduced the cost of the production and helped keep the cost of home delivered milk low.
As the sales of home delivered milk continued to rise, other companies started manufacturing milk bottles. In the Early 1900’s dairies started delivering milk to homes in horse drawn wagons. The milkman became a common early morning sight in all the towns and cities in the United States. Home delivery of milk went on for over fifty years and the glass bottle made it possible.
Milk bottles were made in all sizes and shapes. The early glass milk bottles had the name of the dairy embossed into the glass. These bottles were pressed into a mold which allowed the embossing.
The embossing method was replaced in the 1930’s with “pyroglazing”, which was a process that allowed color to be printed in the glass. Dairy labels now appeared in colors, usually red, blue, black and green. Other colors were used, but these four were the most common. Pyroglazing also allowed ads to be placed on the backs of the bottles. During World War II milk bottles advertised for the sale of war bonds and victory for our troops overseas. These war slogan bottles are prized by milk bottle collectors.
From 1900 to the early 1960’s the glass milk bottle was the primary container used to deliver milk in. It came in different sizes, shapes and colors. Eventually the milk bottle was replaced by wax cartons and the plastic jug, and home delivery has all but disappeared.
Other Bottle Categories
The world of vintage glass bottles in huge, and almost every kind of vintage bottle that you can think of is collectible. There are too many types to list here, some of them are Chinese snuff bottles, whiskey bottles, wine bottles, ink bottles and soda bottles just to name a few.
When you start out collecting it may be difficult to decide what type of bottle and what theme you will collect. But you will find a bottle type that you love and soon you will be on your way to a great collectible bottles collection.
My grandfather, Jesse Yantis ran a dairy farm in San Antonio, TX from 1885 until his death in 1922. a cousin has a glass quart bottle from his dairy that was recently discovered in an old house where it had been boarded over.
If anyone else has a Yantis Dairy Milk bottle from San Antonio, I would be interested. I understand that his glass bottle predates Borden’s bottles and was the first in the area to have glass quart bottles for home delivery.