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.

Are druggist bottles still good for dating?

Since a variety of different round, square, rectangular, and oval druggist bottles were used for such a long period of time, there are generally limited dating opportunities available based on just the specific shape itself. There are some trends however. One example noted above were the square druggist bottles with beveled corners.

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 are the characteristics of early medicine bottles?

Specifically, medicine bottles made during the period from about 1810 to the Civil War typically share most of the following diagnostic characteristics: ● Pontil scared bases are the norm for these early bottles. All pontil types are possible on early medicinal bottles, though blowpipe and iron pontil scars are the most frequently observed.

Do all bottles have a patent number?

Bottle collectors and enthusiasts will find that the majority of bottle-related patents were issued later in the 19th century and thus carry a patent number without an “X”prefix. Got A Question about Your Bottle?

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 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).

How do I find out when a product was patented?

By far the easiest way to make use of patent information is to check the patent number on your bottle with the following patent date chart. It can quickly give you an approximate date when the patent was issued, and thus some idea of when the object was made.

What does an antique medicine bottle look like?

Some antique medicine bottles are embossed with the name and the city of the pharmacy or druggist it came from—these tend to be cylindrical, rectangular, square, or oval. Ointments, salves, and balm came in shorter, wide-mouth bottles, also known as jars.

What are medicinal bottles?

Medicinal bottles are probably the largest and most diverse group of bottles produced during the era covered by this website - the 19th through mid 20th centuries. To quote Fike (1987) on medicine bottles - Literally hundreds of thousands of brands and variations of vessels were manufactured...

When were medicine bottles first used in England?

Early Medicinal bottle styles (Civil War & before) The first use of product or other proprietary embossing on any bottle bodies was on medicine bottles and likely began in England about 1750 with the small Turlington Balsam of Life bottles (Griffenhagen & Young 1959; Richardson 2003).

What color were medicine bottles in the 1850s?

Medium to dark olive green or olive amber glass was a common color for the earliest types of bottles, including medicine bottles as this and the prior bottle (Brinkerhoffs) indicate. The large, light blue-green medicine to the left is embossed with LINDSEYS - BLOOD + / SEARCHER - HOLLIDAYSBURG, PA. and dates from the 1850s or early 1860s.