Antique Food Container Bottles and Purpling.

Old Food Bottles (3 Purpled)

These are old food container bottles found along the Treasure Coast.  This type of bottle seems to be more likely than others to turn purple.  That is said to be caused by manganese dioxide used in the glass before 1914, although that is not a perfect cut-off date and some bottles, including more recent example, were artificially purpled.

In my finds, it seems the most sun-purpled bottles are food container bottles.  Maybe pickle bottles.  I always wondered if the contents might have some effect on purpling, but I've seen no evidence of that in the literature.

I do have a couple pharmacy bottles that are nicely purpled, but other than that very little purpling among my finds.

The bottle on the right is the only one marked with a patent date - Aug. 20, 1901.  Of course, the patent date isn't the date of manufacture, which you'd expect to be somewhat later.

None of these are blown bottles.  On the bottle that has not purpled, the seam marks would suggest an older age than the other bottles.  The general impression would be that older bottles are more likely to be more purpled, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

It seems you can't tell much about age from sun-purpling other than the general date of 1914 being generally accepted as general dividing line.

Below is another food container bottle, but that one has a maker's mark (J. K. & S), which dates it to around 1857 - 1900, older than the above bottles, and obviously a different type of glass (light green) that did not purple

The J K & S maker's mark is rare.  I showed an example in an individual post on that bottle in this blog.

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GORDON'S DRY GIN Bottles.

Two Very Similar Gordon's Dry Gin Bottles.

Front reads: GORDON'S DRY GIN.

One side reads: LONDON, and the other side: ENGLAND.

I've found a few of these and they all have the wolf's head symbol on the bottom.

Bottom of Gordon's Dry Gin Bottle.

The other bottom embossing varies on different bottles.

Both bottles show REGD 610617 on the back.

No. On One Side of Same Bottle.

The BayBottles.com web site (link below) says that number means the bottle dates to 1912 -1913.

The lips on these two bottles are different.

Lips On Same Two Bottles.

The lip on the greener bottle looks more crudely made.  The lip of that one is applied over the neck, which makes a more narrow opening.

The BayBottles.com web site also provides the following information.

The initial Gordon’s Distillery dates back to 1769 in London and they began making a form of dry gin sometime after the advent of continuous distillation in the 1830’s.

Gordon & Company merged with Tanqueray  in 1898 and it was around this time  that listings for Gordon Dry Gin began to appear in U.S. newspaper advertisements. The first mention that I could find in a New York City newspaper were several advertisements for Macy’s, who listed Gordons Gin under the heading “Fine Wines for Medicinal Use.”

Two Blown Brown Applied Lip Beer or Ale Bottles.

Bottle on Right.

Bottle on Left

Closer View of Lip of Bottle on Left.

Bottom of Bottle on Left.

I.G.CO.L…………..Ihmsen Glass Company, Limited, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (c.1876-1900). Also listed as Ihmsen Window Glass Company. Pittsburgh directory listings show this company included the “Limited” in their name from 1876 to c.1896. Bottles bearing this mark can definitely be attributed to this company.

The other bottle has no bottom labeling.