George Schaumloeffell and dating bottles

[Sodasandbeers]

Dating soda and beer bottles has a lot to do with the area the bottles come from, the product that they contained, and the traditions of that area. Generally I find people think bottles are older that they really are.

I have examples of porter bottles with blob tops that date after 1915 and machine made Hutches and blob tops.

Many styles of bottle are only found in certain region and may be based on the transportation systems available to glass manufacturers. A good example are the export beer bottles with mug bases. They seem to generally follow the Application trail as far as distribution on the map below:

Clear Mug Base Export Beer Bottles Map

Zoom in to see the details and click on the bottls to get their information.

 

[jerrypev]

I agree, many bottles can date later than usually assumed. I'm familiar with bottles from the north east. Other areas definitely had their unique regional styles.
Pictured is a machine made Philadelphia blob beer with a Karl Hutter closure. Though this bottle could date to the mid or late teens it has every characteristic of 1890 - 1910 bottles.
Accurately dating bottles made from 1850 - 1880 can be tricky. The basic styles did not significantly change in the north east for almost 30 years.

 

[Sodasandbeers]

I think I can date most soda and beer bottles prior to 1880 fairly accurately +-2 years. If you look at enough of them and do a lot of research, you start to put together a picture and note that there are subtle diffrences as these bottles evolved. Shapes, colors, lips styles, closures all changed over time. Even the pony and porter styles changed ever so slightly over the years between 1860 and 1880.

Michael Krumenacker, (actually his widow Barbara) moved the busines to 1523 N 27th in 1914/15 and the business was taken over by Victor, likely his son, in 1918/19. There at least 2 different styles blown bottles with the 1523 address, which suggests that the machine made bottles were made in the later years of Barbara's tenure (1917-1918).

The script embossing style seems to have been more prevelat in the period 1910-1920, but there are earlier examples. Most of the ones that I have seen are from Philadelphia.