Who Collects Preserves Bottles and Jars?

[Harry Pristis]

Who collects preserves bottles? I'm referring to wide-mouth vessels for such food items as olives, capers, fruit, truffles, jam, et cetera. Here's one to start off:

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[BuckleBoy]

That's a Beautiful example. I'm getting a crash course in Bottle just by reading your Fine posts. Thank you.


Regards,



Buckles

 

[Road Dog]

Have a few canning jars. This jar here I'm not sure what it held. It's very thin and fragile has a great flared lip and open pontil. The jar itself is 11 inches tall.

 

[Harry Pristis]

Have a few canning jars. This jar here I'm not sure what it held. It's very thin and fragile has a great flared lip and open pontil. The jar itself is 11 inches tall.

Nice jar, 'Road Dog'! I am really fond of this sort of glass.

Are you certain that the lid is original to your jar? The lid appears to be pressed glass (from a split-mold). The big advances in producing pressed glass date to the late 1860s and 1870s.

The great challenge would have been to hand-finish a jar lip to exact proportions to fit a pressed-glass lid. Because it is pontil-scarred, I assume the jar is hand-finished. Are the lid and the jar both ground to fit with one another?

Here's one of a pair of 1850s American jars in the same tradition as yours.

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[Road Dog]

Kool Jar! Bought this as is at a Antique Mall some years ago. Lid fits perfect and color is a match. Not totally sure they go together though.

 

[Harry Pristis]

Kool Jar! Bought this as is at a Antique Mall some years ago. Lid fits perfect and color is a match. Not totally sure they go together though.

Well, pressed glass has a long history. The fit and color are the best available test. Nice jar!

Here are three French jars, two pontil-scarred, from the second half of the nineteenth century. They have rolled lips,

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[Road Dog]

Bright green with those french jars. Is that the norm? I think Flaccus made a canning jar that color.

 

[Harry Pristis]

Bright green with those french jars. Is that the norm? I think Flaccus made a canning jar that color.

I just love 'em! This form comes in various shades of green, and it is seen in colorless/aqua glass.

I don't have one of the colorless ones in this (relatively) small size, but I have a number of them (square-shoulder, rolled lip) in huge sizes. The biggest is somewhere around 5+ gallons! Here's a pair of these big jars, one is still in the original wicker.

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[Harry Pristis]

Pickle jars are good. Show us your favorites.

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[Harry Pristis]

Sooner or later, every bottle digger finds one of these capers bottles. Capers are the pickled flower buds of a Mediterranean shrub. Many of these bottles were imported from France.

In the second image is a recent bottle of capers. The taste is "perfumey" -- not a taste I associate with food.

Capers were a significant spice for cooking in the nineteeth and early twentieth century. I think that they are not so popular these days. Anyone here cook with capers?

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[Road Dog]

Got this Biggun the other day. It is near 15 inches tall. I used to have a much smaller version of this years ago I got out of the James River. Has a crown embossed on the bottom.

 

[Harry Pristis]

Got this Biggun the other day. It is near 15 inches tall. I used to have a much smaller version of this years ago I got out of the James River. Has a crown embossed on the bottom.

Well, 'Road Dog', our tastes in bottles run in parallel. I have this same enormous pickle bottle. I'm just weak for big bottles, I guess.

You can see the big pickle on the top shelf in this older image. The three hexagonal cathedral bottles on the right of the same shelf are all 13.25" tall.

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[allen]

those are really neat !

 

[Harry Pristis]

Here's another pickle jar of which I am fond:

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[Harry Pristis]

Another black glass preserving bottle from the mid-1800s:

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[Harry Pristis]

This thread has languished. Does anyone have a pickle jar to show off?

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[bcboy]

I dug up this bottle a few months ago, I think its some kind of preserve bottle, mabey for pickles? I dug it up with other bottles that are around 1905 time frame.

Thanks for looking.

 

[Harry Pristis]

I think you're right, 'bcboy' -- your bottle probably contained some sort of pickled product. Thanks for posting it.

 

[Da Sand Crab]

Got this Biggun the other day. It is near 15 inches tall. I used to have a much smaller version of this years ago I got out of the James River. Has a crown embossed on the bottom.

Well, 'Road Dog', our tastes in bottles run in parallel. I have this same enormous pickle bottle. I'm just weak for big bottles, I guess.

You can see the big pickle on the top shelf in this older image. The three hexagonal cathedral bottles on the right of the same shelf are all 13.25" tall.

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...I hope you have earthquake insurance

 

[Harry Pristis]

Bite your tongue, 'ringman' !

I live in Florida, not on a volcanic island. Florida is a stable, carbonate platform where earthquakes NEVER occur (until the end of the Mayan calendar in late 2012, anyway)!

We are burdened by our collections, aren't we! Collections of objects are vulnerable to so many threats. I worry when I go away from the house; I worry about meteorite strikes; I worry about insurrections and unrest. But, I don't worry about earthquakes!