Posted 6 years ago
Tlsweat7203
(48 items)
This bottle was found on a local dig. It has a very neat shape that's round then flat. The flat side probably had a label for the product.
Being dark Amber in color I am assuming it was used for medicinal purposes.
I've edited the information with more input from my fellow collector. Thanks SpiritBear.
As far as I know, Brockway Glass Co. didn't put date-codes on their bottles. It is probably just a mould number. The only big manufacturers that put reliable date-codes on their bottles were Owen-Illinois, Root, and Glenshaw.
I tend to dig up nearly identical bottles in sites that date from the 1940s-1960s. The cap probably had a squeeze or applicator attached for drops or paste. Topical medicine is almost certain.
So glad you told me the maker. Maybe I can do a little more research and figure a date on it. It does make more since because of the screw top. Do you know about when the screw tops became part of bottle production? I've heard some say the 20's and others say 30's.
Brockway Glass Co:
https://www.glassbottlemarks.com/b-in-a-circle-brockway-glass-company/
Well, if you want to be exact: Screw-tops were pioneered for common production on utility glass (bottles for containing and dispensing products) by the British. You see them a lot in the later 1800s, but they were threaded inside and not outside. In the 1890s, external threads began showing up in America. Most commonly, this is seen on ketchup. I've never seen a medicine bottle with a screw-top before the early 1900s. The tops were finished off by hand at this point, and ground down by hand, so they are very rough on the top in most cases; some tooled the top to a smooth finish, eliminating the threads at the very top. This continues into the early 1900s. There seems to be very few screw-tops made in the 1910s, but they pick up again in the 1920s. By the 1940s, almost everything is a screw-top when it comes to medicines. The '20s and, at least till the mid '30s, cork-tops were still dominant. It was mostly ketchup and patent medicine bottles that used screw-tops.
A bottle like yours is more typical of the 1940s-1960s.
Good stuff! Thanks.