Dating medicine bottles

How to date patent/proprietary medicine bottles?

Dating summary/notes: Due to the immense diversity of shapes, the dating of patent/proprietary medicine bottles can not be done based on shape alone since just about any shape is possible over long time spans. Instead dating must be approached based on manufacturing based diagnostic features or through research of the historical record.

What is bottle dating?

Bottle Dating page (and website in general) is designed to address what the website author refers to as utilitarian bottles & jars(click for more information). Utilitarian items makes up the bulk of the bottles produced during the 19th century and first half of the 20th century.

When was the first medicine bottle made?

Dating summary/notes: The bottles noted above are just a sampling of the thousands of different medicine bottles produced during the early era from about 1810 through the Civil War.

What is the date range for the bottle a?

This yields a likely date range under this question of between 1860 and 1875 for non-pontiled bottles like A. At this point in the dating, the overlapping date ranges from all the questions gives the user a much narrowed probable date range of 1860 to 1875 for bottle A.

When were patent medicines created?

The earliest patent medicines were created in the 17th century. They were most popular from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, before the advent of consumer protection laws and evidence-based medicine. Despite the name, patent medicines were usually trademarked but not actually patented, in order to keep their formulas secret.

What is a “proprietary” medicine?

Proprietary (aka patent) medicines were (and are) remedial agents available without prescription (aka across the counter medications) and ...generally protected by secrecy, copyright, or patent against free competition by name, product, composition, or manufacturing process (Fike 1987).

How many different types of medicine bottles?

As noted previously, the breadth of variety within the medicinal bottle category was indicated by Fike (1987) dividing his classic medicine bottle book (The Bottle Book: A Comprehensive Guide to Historic, Embossed Medicine Bottles) into over 40 different product chapters!

What is the history of pharmacy bottles?

Druggist bottles, of course, go back much farther in time - as far back as the ancient Egyptian era. The first identifiable pharmacy bottles were Venetian bottles in the 16th century with applied enamel labeling identifying them as such (Munsey 1970).

What is the probable date range for bottle a?

At this point in the dating, the overlapping date ranges from all the questions gives the user a much narrowed probable date range of 1860 to 1875 for bottle A. The user is now directed to move to the last question in the Mouth-Blown bottle section of the Dating page - Question #7- which deals with air venting marks on the bottle surface.

How to date Coke bottles?

It is easy to date Coke bottles that are made by the Root Glass company. The word “ROOT” will be present on those bottles. The “ROOT” base mark can be seen in original Coke glass bottles. Root bottles carry model numbers. Also, Root Coke bottles will have heel numbers. “Co”, O will be in lower-case letters.

How accurate is bottle dating?

First this cautionary note: Bottle dating is not a precise science! Using physical, manufacturing related diagnostic features, most utilitarian bottles can usually only be accurately placed within a date range of 10-15 years (i.e., 1870-1880 or 1885) .

How old is bottle a?

So at this point in the Dating key we can be confident that bottle A dates somewhere between about 1860 and 1915. The user is now directed to move to Question #5, which deals with way the bottle was finished, i.e., the technology or process that produced the finish.