Historical Bottle Lip Shapes

By Richard LaMotte

Ask a bottle collector to assess the age of a glass vessel, and they will often begin by inspecting the lip, neck, and bottom of the bottle. Each key feature provides clues as to the era it was produced and, in some cases, what was contained therein. Bottles made prior to 1900 often have imperfections along the lip and, especially, the collar that indicate the container was hand tooled. If a glass shard from a bottle bottom shows ribs along the perimeter (called knurling), then it is likely a post-1950s piece created in either green, brown, or white. More on bottle bottoms will come in a later article.

Sea glass collectors should take the time to inspect their finds, looking for unique clues among their pieces of history. Most lip shards have a familiar curved form that allows the analyst to estimate the total diameter of the entire mouth of the vessel. The narrow lips of about ½-inch in diameter are often from old patent-medicine bottles, drug bottles, inks, vials, and similar containers designed to pour their contents in small doses. Lips with a mouth diameter in the ¾-inch-to-1-inch range are the most common, used not only for sodas, beer, liquor, and wine but a vast array of other applications. Wide-mouth containers of about 2-inches were often used for milk and foods, such as pickles. Those wider mouths that are closer to 3-inches, habitually in soft blue with screw threads, are normally from the Mason jar canning containers. The latter vessels were one of the first bottle forms to be mass-produced in the millions with screw-cap closures.

In the early 1900s, several bottle makers were ordering their molds with re-sealable, screw-thread lip designs instead of the stock Crown seal that came standard with most Owens bottle machines. The big advantage, of course, was that the screw-cap closure could be resealed.

There are several simple tips when attempting to date a lip shard, and many make common sense. When dating these special shards, it helps to have a portion of the lip and collar.

The early vessels in the first half of the 1700s were rather crude, both along the lip and collar. The hot glass was paddled down with rough tools bearing minimal regard for uniformity, just an opening of adequate size to fit a cork. Early colonial-era bottles often had flared lips, rolled lips, flanged lips, or rough sheared lips. Applied string lips had been used prior to 1700 and became increasingly popular, especially on wine bottles, until the late 1700s when they were phased out. Crude tapered lips gained popularity by 1800, chiefly on gin and other spirit bottles.

By the mid-1800s, glass blowers were using more advanced tools to shape lips, so far more refined “tooled” tapered lips became the norm along with double tapered lips, which were used a great deal on mineral water or seltzer bottles. Also during this time, double-rounded lips, tooled-flared lips, and squared-off lips became popular for drug and alcohol bottles.

A notable transition began around 1850 with far thicker lip designs, such as the Blob-top lip; its tulip-shape became popular on soda, beer, and mineral water bottles. Thick vessels, from top to bottom, were being made during that time in hopes of continual returns for reuse. Then in the late 1800s, a more donut-shaped version was used for sodas called the Hutchison-style design.

Just after 1900, the Crown seal had become a dominant design along with screw-cap closures and wide-mouth lips for milk and cream containers. Production of patent medicine bottles using cork or rubber stoppers virtually died off following the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. After 1910, only corked wines and wafer-sealed milk containers had their own identity. Though the milk bottles are long gone, most wines are still corked and remain as stalwarts of tradition.

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All photos courtesy ©Celia Pearson 2004 from the book, PURE Sea Glass