Flea Market find, any ideas?

[Hamburgler]

I found this at a flea market this weekend. The bottom has a few chips and the outside is covered with light scratches, but it looked too good to pass up for a buck. Any ideas on what it originally held? It says "Patent" on the shoulder. The color is a little more brown than the picture with it up to the light shows. The outside of the bottle is also whittled, but it is hard to see in the pictures.
Thanks
Dave

 

[Hamburgler]

picture # 2

 

[Hamburgler]

picture # 3

 

[Jim]

Nice find for a buck, even with the chips. It is a whiskey or other liquor bottle. I'm sure there is someone here who will be able to tell you where it was made. ~Jim

 

[GuntherHess]

There are a bunch of variations of that bottle. Yours has some really cool embossing. They used the PATENT bottles for all sorts of stuff.
I found one of the squat ones like that with a Johann Hoff malt extracts label on it.

 

[LayerSlayer]

Can't help you with identifying it, but when I saw the lip and saw you paid a dollar for it, obviously you made a nice find.

 

[Hamburgler]

Thanks everyone. I like the way it looks, if you hold it in the light the surface is very wavy on the body. Even if its not anything special, would it be worth a tumble, or is the scratching too deep to be fixed? It almost looks like a returnable beer bottle that has light scratches and nicks all over the surface from rubbing up against other bottles for a long time.

 

[LC]

Matt , I have found a few bottles over the years that were embossed with one name , and another makers paper label on them. Was it a practice of some companies to use other company bottles for their own use by applying their paper labels onto them to save on having to buy more bottles ? Or was someone just playing around with the ones I came across ?

 

[tigue710]

yours is an English Patent bottle, the were used for all kinds of stuff, mineral water, beer, foods, what ever one wanted to put in them. The Patent mark on these types of bottles started with the Patent of the three piece mold by an English man name Rickett in the 1820's. He had Patent put in the glass of his bottles, well because he Patented the design. Starting in the 1860's numerous American glass makers started adding it to there whiskey and wine bottles, either because it was the "thing" at the time, sort of a way to give them selfs creditability or because they each had patented their own design. Its still unsure why they did this, as most of bottles are very similar... and obviously copied from other molds. Its likely it was done to try and protect their mold design in an industry that relied and borrowed heavily on other manufacturers... to no avail. Eorupean makers soon followed suite. Which brings us back to your which is a late Ricketts bottle, made in England in the 1880's time period. Value in mint condition, $50.00 or so...

 

[Hamburgler]

Wow, thanks for all the info Tigue710. Everything i wanted to know and then some. There is an unbelievable amount of knowledge on this forum...