Tall Caswell Apothecary Bottle

[robertk]

Bottle Vitals​

	Date	Color	Shape	Size (Height x Diameter)	Value*
Tall Caswell	1880s	Clear	Round cylinder	10" x 3.25" dia	$20.00

Bottle Views (click to enlarge):

Front	Back	Side	Side	Bottom

If you've ever been in a barbershop, dentist's office, or hospital, you have probably seen a bottle very similar to this one. They are apt to contain just about anything, from alcohol to cotton swabs to essential oils. This style of bottle has been around a long time and has proven its utility. But tracking down this particular bottle was quite a challenge, because it has no identifying marks of any kind. No embossing, no logo, no mold numbers, no maker's mark, not even so much as a mold line or pattern imperfection to look for. The only info I had to go on was the general timeframe of the late 1800s, and the general shape of the bottle with the square shoulders, which seems unusual for the time period.

But luckily, I found the bottle in an old catalog from the Illinois Glass Company -- it's a "Tall Caswell" bottle.

It is made of flint glass, which had a higher lead content and better optical qualities than other types of glass. It would have had a label to say what was in it back in the day. Without a label, it is impossible to say exactly what was in this particular bottle.

The "Caswell" name led to finding a lot of very similar looking bottles from a firm called "Caswell, Hazard, & Co.". The examples that I could find for that company were mostly embossed, and the ones that had paper labels didn't have the square shoulders like this one. So it may be from them, or it may not, since it appears to have been generally available.

If it was them, there's a fair chance it contained cologne (they were known for their "No 6" cologne) or some other aromatic, though they also dealt in oils and general chemistry, so it's hard to say.

So it's a Tall Caswell bottle, but who used it, or for what, remains a mystery.

I forgot to get a "before" shot before I cleaned it, but it really didn't change much with cleaning anyway. Perhaps the leaded glass fares a bit better I the ground. I did take another photo of the bottom of the bottle, though, since it's quite uneven and seemed interesting. You can also see some of the bubbles in the glass. Click to enlarge.



*Value is a wild guess based on similar bottles on eBay at the time of posting.

 

[Limitool]

I bet it is hard to track down a bottle with no markings at all. But you did an awesome job Robert...!