Need help identifying....Wine bottle

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Chellbell

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This bottle is about 9 3/4 in tall, no markings, dark olive green color, no seams, except for a very crooked uneven line at the very top of the bottle. My Boyfriend is telling me it was made in two parts and that it isn't very old at all. But I can't stand it when he is right.Can anyone tell me anything about this bottle. I was thinking it was not machine made and before 1900????
 

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Robby Raccoon

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If the bottle is seamless, it was made in a turn-mould, which obliterates the seam that would otherwise have formed, since the glass is turned in the mould itself. The lip, using a special tool, is finished with a string of glass laid on and worked into a pleasing ring. The bottle could have been made into the 1910s in England, often sent over to the American market with European wine. The bottle is so well made that I'd not think it was made before the 1880s. As such, it is hand-blown-- not machine-made.

But the real question is, what kind of relationship have you when one of you has to be right? It's not about who's right, but it is about what can be discovered-- especially through working together for a more right relationship! Both of you, not just one of you. It takes two to make a couple.
 

Harry Pristis

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You have a half-bottle used for burgundy or possibly champagne. The bottle, like the wine, is French. It dates to the turn of the 20th Century, plus or minus 10 years (so it's more than 100 years old). The bottle was blown in a mold, then turned before removing to obliterate mold seams. Finally, the mouth of the bottle was tooled with a lipping tool which included the ring (this is not a separately-applied ring).

I apologize for the presumptuous personal advice to which you were subjected. New collectors, especially new female collectors, are welcome here.
-----Harry Pristis
 

nhpharm

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I'm just going to add one thing to Harry's description. These typically have tooled lips. However, it appears that the entire lip (ring and lip) were applied on this bottle, as is evidenced by the bit of excess glass that is dripping below the ring. A bit unusual and could indicate a bit earlier manufacture (like 1880's or so)...I've typically dug the applied lip ones in that context.
 

RelicRaker

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I've seen seamless olive oil bottles with a similar finish. I'm guessing they were made using the same turn-mould technique
 

Harry Pristis

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I'm just going to add one thing to Harry's description. These typically have tooled lips. However, it appears that the entire lip (ring and lip) were applied on this bottle, as is evidenced by the bit of excess glass that is dripping below the ring. A bit unusual and could indicate a bit earlier manufacture (like 1880's or so)...I've typically dug the applied lip ones in that context.

That seems to be a reasoned argument. My own interpretation is that the lipping tool caught the edge of the pre-molded lip ring, thus producing the ironed "drip" to which you refer.

French wine bottles of this sort don't have applied lips -- not even the earliest versions which have applied strings. They all have sheared lips, sometimes left raw, sometimes fire-polished, sometimes tooled (as with Chellbell's bottle).

In the earlier bottles, the applied string is often "tooled" -- simply flattened against the neck of the bottle. This is not the same as tooling the lip as was done with Chellbell's example.

Over a couple of centuries and (no doubt) millions of wine bottles, the French mastered this technique until automatic bottle-making machines changed everything but the form.

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Harry Pristis

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I've been thinking about this thread. I think I missed something. I now think that Chellbell's wine bottle is a machine-made bottle. The French were using automatic bottle machines well before the 1903 American patent, and I think this example shows some evidence that this is a machine bottle.

It seems to me that the lipping tool was a function of a machine operation. I think the lipping tool gripped the neck below the ring; it smoothed and beveled the machine-sheared lip; it slightly turned the bottle in the mold; and, it pulled the bottle from the mold.

Evidence? Note that there are no striations - tooling marks - on the pressed glass "drip" below the neck ring and none on the ring itself. This indicates that the lipping tool turned the locked bottle. Hand finishing the lip would require the lipping tool to move within the neck of the bottle producing exterior tool marks. There is no doubt that the lip end of the bottle was where the torque was applied based on the faint stress marks spiraling a degree or two within the neck.

I don't think this changes the age estimate of the bottle as TOC. In a way, this makes this wine bottle even more interesting: This is a transition bottle. It didn't take long into the 20th Century for these bottles to be made without the flaws observed in this example.
 

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