Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish: for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you. Acts 13:41
Found this old bottle today I think it's an old beer bottle but not sure. Any help would be appreciated.
I think you are in the right town, but on the wrong street, so to speak.
Your bottle appears to be a stoneware ale or stout bottle that is slip-glazed. Not the typical British ale bottle. Look for a maker's mark on the lower side of the bottle.
A gazillion ale bottles in a typical two-tone glaze were imported into the USA (is that where you found it?) in the second half of the nineteenth century on into the twentieth. Many were produced in Glasgow, Scotland.
These bottles were made for ale or stout which kept better without refrigeration. Pasteurization (after 1873) allowed for local brewing of the more-fragile Pilsner beers, and importation of the bottled ale dropped off.
This image shows three beer or ale bottles. Left and center are American-made, the center bottle in the Bristol style of glaze. The third bottle is British ware, recovered in Guyana, a former British colony. The sharp shoulders are not the most common form, which has sloping shoulders like your bottle.
“A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.”
--Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle) in "The Sign of Four"
Sharing the culture, history and adventure of the American Southwest.
Jun 2006
Reche Canyon California
ace 250
1,769
1 times
All Types Of Treasure Hunting
Re: Stoneware bottle
Originally Posted by Harry Pristis
Originally Posted by dooley01
Found this old bottle today I think it's an old beer bottle but not sure. Any help would be appreciated.
I think you are in the right town, but on the wrong street, so to speak.
If you look at the bottle in question it tapers towards the bottom, like a bowling pin and your examples do not taper....Just a observation
PLL
Your bottle appears to be a stoneware ale or stout bottle that is slip-glazed. Not the typical British ale bottle. Look for a maker's mark on the lower side of the bottle.
A gazillion ale bottles in a typical two-tone glaze were imported into the USA (is that where you found it?) in the second half of the nineteenth century on into the twentieth. Many were produced in Glasgow, Scotland.
These bottles were made for ale or stout which kept better without refrigeration. Pasteurization (after 1873) allowed for local brewing of the more-fragile Pilsner beers, and importation of the bottled ale dropped off.
This image shows three beer or ale bottles. Left and center are American-made, the center bottle in the Bristol style of glaze. The third bottle is British ware, recovered in Guyana, a former British colony. The sharp shoulders are not the most common form, which has sloping shoulders like your bottle.
If you look at the bottle in question it tapers towards the bottom, like a bowling pin and your examples do not taper....Just a observation --PLL
This bottle is not a Jim Beam bottle, sorry.
The taper in the image that has confused you is a product of the position at which the camera was held in relation to the bottle. This optical phenomenon is called "perspective," I believe.
In this case, the part of the bottle that is closer to the camera (the lip) appears larger, and a part of the bottle that is further from the camera (the base) appears diminishingly smaller. You can read about and see perspective distortion here: http://www.ask.com/bar?q=perspective...photography%29
We can determine that 'dooley1' held his camera above the bottle because the entire mouth is visible in the image. If 'dooley1' had taken his picture with the camera perpendicular to the stoneware bottle, the body of the bottle would appear cylindrical (or nearly so).
“A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.”
--Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle) in "The Sign of Four"
I found one similar to this bottle a while back. It has the Glasgow mark towards the bottom of the bottle. I determined that it was most likely a ginger beer bottle. Cool find!
I found one similar to this bottle a while back. It has the Glasgow mark towards the bottom of the bottle. I determined that it was most likely a ginger beer bottle. Cool find!
It is a common misconception that these stoneware ale bottles are "ginger beer" bottles. I think it may be diggers' lore, like wood bottle molds and graphite pontil scars.
Ginger beer bottles are typically marked as such with under-glaze stencils. Stoneware ale bottles don't have such labels.
I think the confusion has arisen from the refilling of ale bottles with locally-produced ginger beer. Making ginger beer for personal use or local distribution was a common practice. And, there were plenty of ale bottles available for this secondary use.
Unfortunately, THE COLLECTOR'S GUIDE TO CIVIL WAR PERIOD BOTTLES AND JARS by Mike Russell promotes this identification error by mis-labeling stoneware ale bottles from the Bertrand (sunken steam-ship) as ginger beers. There were NO ginger beer bottles, identified as such, recovered from the Bertrand cargo, although there were numerous ale bottles identified from paper labels or crate markings.
“A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.”
--Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle) in "The Sign of Four"
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by dooley01
