Clover Pontil ?

[AntiqueMeds]

I seem to remember seeing one on a Vaughn's Lith med. Its ext uncommon on medicines.

 

[deenodean]

Thanks for your replies Matt & Matt...Perhaps it is a re-fired pontil mark. I really dont know. I'll have to find where I read the term ' clover pontil '. Regardless, there is a blob of glass on one side of the center kick up point..
Too bad the bottle top was broken ( as with most of the stuff I find here ) ...It is the only cup mold I have.

 

[tigue710]

I do see the blob of glass, must be remnants of the pontil. Please dont go away with re-fired pontil though, the re-fired pontil is total hogwash! The kick-up in the base was likely caused by a tool used to make the kick up.

Here are two bases with kick ups. The marks in the base are from the tool, not from a pontil. The only evidence of a pontil are the rough edges towards the outside of the kick-up.

Here in this picture are two bases from a very similar mold, one with and one without the kick-up. The one on the left is likely what these bases looked liked before a kick-up tool was used. It is without a pontil.

 

[deenodean]

Excellent photos Matt..The bottle on the right in the 1st picture resembles mine. It also has a nice blob of glass.. Do you think my bottle is British or American made?

 

[tigue710]

Thanks Danny. I'd go with British for sure. The majority of Black glass bottles found over here in North America are British. It seems the American bottles just didn't last or were not made in the same quantities because they are rather tough to come by although common. I see one for every hundred British bottles. The American manufacturing techniques were quite different, and in my opinion stand out boldly from the British glass.

 

[surfaceone]

ORIGINAL: tigue710

They are most often seen on large Gothic pickles and some large meds. The link you've provided is to a modern piece Matt, I'm not sure what that thing is! Here is a picture of a Clover pontil, attributed to Stoddard. You can see as I traced in red the image of a clover, which is really just the Punty being divided into four sections, all part of one piece...

Hey Matt,

Thanks for the great illustration, and helping to flesh this out in my mind's eye. So this was accomplished by filing, or otherwise cutting the business end of the punty rod?

ORIGINAL: tigue710

here is another strange cross hatched type

This one is almost like a signature. Very unique.

Thank you, gentlemen, for a very educational thread.

"Evidence that the tip of the iron rod was patterned is sometimes seen in the mark left behind, like the hatch markings shown in the iron pontil mark pictured to the left on an 1850-1860 calabash bottle. Other iron pontil scars can show evidence of a rod with a four quadrant head, i.e. a quatrefoil, and many other shapes (Jones 1986). .." Thanks Bill.

 

[surfaceone]

Gentlemen,

I'd be pleased to have your thoughts on my old black bottom.

 

[tigue710]

That cross hatched example is very cool! Yes, they are like a signature, no two rods would be exactly alike. This is what is so exciting about them is that they will help us indisputably attribute certain bottles to a certain glass house and possibly even certain dates. So far a few have been found to have been used at Stoddard, that being the type of clover I've posted, and an 8 piece star type, or more like a pie, cut into 8 pieces. All I have seen look to have been made by cutting into the head of the punty rod.

 

[tigue710]

That looks to me like a typical kick-up from a black Surf. Here is another picture of a Townsend's base with what looks like a clover or quatrafoil pontil. This one is easily recognized in my opinion as just a round pontil broken up by the shape of the base. It would be unnecessarily time consuming and difficult to line the pontil up with the sides of the base every time.

 

[baltbottles]

here is a late 1850s American Blackglass ale.

Chris