Onion Bottles?

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scubapro67

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I have a few Dutch onions from Guyana also. Occasionally they do find English bottles. I'd really love to find an early English bottle from Belize - apparently they are quite abundant, but there's restrictions on their export.
Attached a picture of the James River English Onion - note the rather unique blue color that appears in natural light (possibly glass gall - reused glass/ other impurities). This style is similar to yours from the Suwannee. The narrower, longer neck and tooled V string rim places it around 1710. But as we know, the styles overlapped a fair bit.
Side.jpg
 

Harry Pristis

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I sure didn't see an English onion in Guyana. Any that are found must be quickly filtered out of the commercial stream to be offered to select customers. Later, I was offered a pancake onion from Guyana through a Guyanese dealer, but we couldn't get together on price.

Van den Bossche provides a good explanation of glass gall, an interesting phenomenon. I have an extra copy of Van den Bossche's book, still in the publisher's shrink-wrap, that I might trade for decent black glass.

Here's another "Dutch" onion from Guyana:
octagonal.jpg


 
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Harry Pristis

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Glass gall is a contamination with sodium sulphate (Na[SUB]2[/SUB]SO[SUB]4[/SUB]) of a glass batch or of individual bottles from the batch. The common source of this contamination is ground blast-furnace slag. Here ground slag was used as the "sand" in a sand pontil.


black_glassgall_full.jpg black_glassgall_base.jpg
 

RelicRaker

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Found this heartbreaker an hour ago. Couldn't locate the neck.
Embossing in seal is hard to read. Possibly "J.F.T. & Co." Phila PA.
Color is actually a very dark honey-amber. Does have a pontil scar on base.
Any info appreciated.

broken onion bottle.jpg
 
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Harry Pristis

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Found this heartbreaker an hour ago. Couldn't locate the neck.
Embossing in seal is hard to read. Possibly "J.F.T. & Co." Phila PA.
Color is actually a very dark honey-amber. Does have a pontil scar on base.
Any info appreciated.

I found one in a Glass Works Auction in 1992. The seal reads: J.F.T & CO. / PHILAD. Med. amber; 7 1/8" H; open pontil; applied handle and mouth; American 1860 - 70. This one had a 1 1/4" crack. It sold for $90.
 

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