kungfufighter
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Eric is correct - the bottle was pontiled in order to fashion some type of lip treatment (in this case a thin, flared lip). True "burst lip" bottles are not pontiled and instead simply sheared from the blowpipe. The pontil rod was only affixed to the base of a bottle when some type of mouth tooling was required. No pontil scar would be evident if the bottle was simply "whetted" (cracked off) the blowpipe. The technique was relatively common in Victorian-era England and much less so in the States (seen primarily in later inks produced in the West). It was a technique done for the sake of expediency and used on bottles that were not meant to be put to the lips (i.e. inks). The fancy cologne bottle in question is American, 1830-1850 and it would originally have had a flared lip.
