Old Smile soda bottle

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ROBBYBOBBY64

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The neat thing about hobble skirt coca cola is that smashed in a 100 pieces, you can still tell it was a coca cola by just 1 shard. Great advisement.
That was one of the stipulations of the contest to see who could come up with the best coke bottle. The rules stated that the bottle must be recognizable in absolute darkness and smashed on the ground. Odd right? Root Glass Company won.
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ROBBYBOBBY64

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If we look at modern machine made bottles the seam is perfect top to bottom so there had to be some kind of HANDLING in the earliest days of the invention. Interesting.
Had to be. Always problems with the first anything, til they get the bugs out. Proper training on said equipment is another factor.
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NYlakebottles

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Yes, the seam does go to the top of the lip. That line up the side of the lip is a seam, and it goes to the top. The seam does not have to be continuously aligned up the side of the bottle in order to be a dead giveaway that it's an ABM bottle. If ANY seam goes to the top of the lip, it's an ABM bottle (unless it's a burst-top bottle or something like that, which yours clearly isn't). An applied top will never have a seam going through it because that's not how they were made. Applied crown tops aren't really rare because a lot were made in the UK, but they look nothing like yours. They look like this:
View attachment 229831
Note the globby, uneven glass at the base of the crown. That's the sign that it was applied, not a smooth seam. A four-piece mold is something entirely unrelated but again will never have a seam through the lip because that's not how the lips were made. The fourth piece isn't the lip. An uneven base and bubbles in the glass don't mean anything in regards to whether or not it's ABM, the base was often uneven in that era and I've seen ABM bottles with a hundred times more bubbles than yours has.
And it does have a suction scar on the base. That's that circular seam-like line that runs around the outside of the embossing.
Thanks, so much to learn, rely heavily on sha.org but soooo many pages and they did state "1900s into the 1920s) and occasional later (1930s and later) machine-made bottles the vertical body/neck and finish mold seams are discontinuous and offset from each other; click offset seams for a picture of this attribute"
 

CanadianBottles

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Thanks, so much to learn, rely heavily on sha.org but soooo many pages and they did state "1900s into the 1920s) and occasional later (1930s and later) machine-made bottles the vertical body/neck and finish mold seams are discontinuous and offset from each other; click offset seams for a picture of this attribute"
Do they list any explanation for why the seams are offset? The one in that linked picture is interesting, looks like it aligns more closely with the prototype Owens machine in the description I found. Maybe from a very early Owens machine or from one of his competitors.
 

kolawars

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The earliest deco soda bottle design that I'm aware of is the 1908 Bludwine "hobbleskirt" which was later patented. The Gay-Ola "four ring" design was patented in 1914 in response to a lawsuit by Coca-Cola. Coke lost that lawsuit and developed their own patented bottle a year later for their own product protection.
 

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CanadianBottles

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The earliest deco soda bottle design that I'm aware of is the 1908 Bludwine "hobbleskirt" which was later patented. The Gay-Ola "four ring" design was patented in 1914 in response to a lawsuit by Coca-Cola. Coke lost that lawsuit and developed their own patented bottle a year later for their own product protection.
Interesting, I stand corrected on that one then. I think I may have found an earlier example of a deco bottle though; this David Middleman hutch from Philly:
1632577352400.png

It's weird to think of a hutch as a deco bottle but I'd unambiguously consider it a deco if it was an ABM crown top, so I think it should qualify.
 

NYlakebottles

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Do they list any explanation for why the seams are offset? The one in that linked picture is interesting, looks like it aligns more closely with the prototype Owens machine in the description I found. Maybe from a very early Owens machine or from one of his competitors.
There wasn't an explanation but I saw a sketch (that I haven't been able to find again) that showed a five piece mold. Since it has a very smooth transition I do agree it's machine made, perhaps as one suggested a secondary process or a more complex 5 piece mold was used. I like the odd stuff!
 

CanadianBottles

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Kinda reminds me of my Mt. View attachment 230083Clemens Hutch? LEON.
Yeah there were a number of those multi-sided or ribbed hutch bottles. To avoid ambiguity I was initially excluding them from what could be considered a deco bottle and focusing only on the ones where the shape of the bottle itself was significantly altered in a unique way, rather than simply putting a texture on the sides, but I'd consider a bottle like yours to be a deco if it was an ABM crown, so really it probably should qualify. And at that point we can go even further back, like this Geo. Eagle pontilled blob top:
1632780251742.png
 

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