Does Your Embossing Read Left to Right?

[Atlas]

In a mid-winter funk last eve, gazing at one of my hard dug treasures, I noticed something odd. Many of my embossed bottles are meant to be read with the bottle lying on its side instead of upright. If I hold the bottle with neck in left hand and base in the right every bottle I have reads from left to right--EXCEPT the one I was looking at last nite. (I'll get the name of that bottle tonite.)

Is this unusual? I looked at 20-such bottles and only one read the opposite way. Hardly a scientific study..so I'm asking you fellow bottle-hounds.

Thanks!

Atlas

 

[madman]

hey atlas yes ive got a bottlelike that also ill wait till ya post youres

 

[GuntherHess]

interesting observation.
I would make a couple guesses on why that is the general case.
- the text at the base of a bottle is more likely to get screwed up than the text near the top so an embosser is going to start at the top.
- the majority of workers are going to be right handed. Only 7-10% of the population would be left handed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-handedness This would make left handed mold makers pretty rare. And if you ever notice the penmanship for lefthanded people (like my wife) you wouldnt think they would pick any profession which had a requirement for calligraphy.
I dont know if there were any written or unwritten conventions.

 

[ktbi]

One of my favorite bottles, fairly common Rumford Chemical Works, is like that. Most of them are left-to-right, but there were a few right-to-left which are uncommon and worth a bit more. Anybody else seen Rumford like these> Ron

 

[Lordbud]

See my run of Weingartner & Co druggist bottles from Palo Alto, California (from an old thread). One has the embossing reading the other way, meaning the mold plate was inserted upside down.

 

[KBbottles]

Yes the older versions are typically like the one on the left in your picture along with the patent date embossed on bottom.

 

[ombudsman]

I would think that the writing is typically left to right as it is more natural to read it that way on a store shelf. ??

 

[tigue710]

just a note here, they all read left to right... none of them read right to left... English can not be written that way, like Hebrew. really the left side of the bottle would be its side while standing though, so that means none of the bottles read left to right either... actually top to bottom or bottom to top...

that being the case, I dont see how being left handed or right handed would lead to the bottle mold being carved from top to bottom or bottom to top...

 

[CazDigger]

Cool thread! Here are 2 Fosgates Anodyne Cordial bottles. They are both open pontiled. The darker one is much earlier 1830s and I believe was made at the Mt. Vernon Glassworks. The later one is relatively common and from the 1850s and made at Mt Pleasant (Saratoga). Fosgate had his business in Auburn, NY near where I live. I describe them as "top down" or "bottom up" embossing as opposed to left or right, funny how different people see the same thing in different ways. There must be others out there? keep posting.
Mark