Medicine Chest: Age Exceptions

By John Panella and Joe Widman

AN OLD QUESTION, WITH AGE EXCEPTIONS

Probably the most asked question about American antique bottles is, “How old is it?”

If you know the history of bottle making you can probably answer this question with over ninety percent accuracy, and get within ten to thirty years of the bottle’s true age. The problem is that there are many exceptions to this known history. In this article I will list some of the usual exceptions and one very big documented exception.

Here is a list of the history of the most common ways bottles were made:

• Blown-in-Mold with Open Pontil — Bottles were made this way until about 1850.

• Blown-in-Mold with Iron or Improved Pontil — Bottles were made this way from about 1850 to 1860.

• Blown-in-Mold without Pontil and with Applied Lip — Bottles were made this way from about 1860 to 1890.

• Blown-in-Mold without Pontil and with a Tooled Top Lip — Bottles were made this way from about 1890 until 1903 or a little later.

• Machine-Made — From 1903 to the present day.

The only certain date on this list is 1903. No machine-made bottles were produced before this time. There are many exceptions and overlaps for all the other methods. The overlaps happened between areas of the country, dealers and individual bottle blowers.

By John Panella and Joe Widman

Potasafras is a notable, documented exception. Generally bottles made much after 1903 were machine-made, without exception. However this example is man-made and it is embossed Established 1914. That means it was blown-in-mold with a tooled cork top, eleven years after bottles could be machine-made. I can only guess that pehaps the company didn’t want to order the quantity required from the big manufacturers. It must be that they found a small company that would hand-make them.

Potasafras was a combination of potassium iodide, alcohol, and “eight other valuable medical ingredients” produced by The Potasafras Company of Columbus, Ohio in 1914. It was intended for use as a constitutional treatment, expectorant, tonic, sedative and system cleanser.

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There are other ways that can help date bottles. Some are nearly useless and others can be quite accurate. The problem here is that they only apply to a small percentage of all antique bottles.

Most collectable antique bottles have a cork closure. Today most bottles have a screw-top closure. However this, in itself, isn’t very useful in dating bottles because there have been screw-top bottles for most of the history of American bottles. If a bottle is blown-in-mold with a screw-top it was probably made in the 19th century. If it is machine-made it was made in the 20th century. Not much help.

There were many other types of closures. The most successful was the Hutchinson Stopper. It dates the bottle from about 1880 to 1910. Other unusual stoppers were used for much shorter times, so they can very accurately date a bottle. There just weren’t many bottles of this type.