Is this a whiskey bottle? Any help is welcome!

[PinwheelExchange]

Hi there,
Many years ago a bottle digging buddy of mine gave me this bottle after returning from a dig up in Alaska. He said they had found it in an old, abandoned mineshaft. Please see photos attached. What kind of lip is this called? And what do they call the inverted base? Although the bottle looks black, it’s in fact amber.

 

[Mailman1960]

Hi there,
Many years ago a bottle digging buddy of mine gave me this bottle after returning from a dig up in Alaska. He said they had found it in an old, abandoned mineshaft. Please see photos attached. What kind of lip is this called? And what do they call the inverted base? Although the bottle looks black, it’s in fact amber.

It's a slick so just a guess, European bitters early 1900s

 

[Harry Pristis]

Ale bottle, probably British, 1860s to 1880.

 

[Mailman1960]

Ale bottle, probably British, 1860s to 1880.

I gave it a shot. Why do you think it's that early. If you like something keep it, is there any value in it. I'm still learning I've left those types of bottles behind.

 

[DavidW]

Hi, that is a CLASSIC "black glass" type bottle that was made at least from the 1850s into the 1880s, maybe a few into the 1890s. Applied lip, often crude and drippy lip. Usually they were made in a three-piece mold. Most of them probably held ale, and made in Great Britain but I bet at least some of them were also made in American glasshouses to imitate the "look" of imported bottles.
We do have PROOF that many similar bottles were already in production before April 1, 1865. That's when the steamboat BERTRAND sank in the Missouri River, and, many decades later TONS of stuff were recovered from the wreck, including lots of bottles that look very similar to that one. The lips can vary a bit, and some examples are a bit more taller, others a bit wider. A few examples are shown on pages 16 through 20 in the book "The Bertrand Bottles" by Ronald Switzer. A few of the the 250,000 artifacts (of every description) that were recovered are displayed at the DeSoto National Wildlife Museum in Iowa. https://www.fws.gov/refuge/Desoto/wildlife_and_habitat/steamboat_bertrand.html

I've noticed sellers often list them on ebay as "Civil war period" but it is very hard to know how old any particular one really is. Unless you actually dug it from a privy where everything found close by can be dated accurately, it is hard to say. Just my humble opinion.

Most bottles of that type are unmarked but some ARE marked on the bottom. Here are a few marks seen: "WOOLFALL / MANCHESTER" and some variations of that name embossing. That definitely dates from the 1850s into the early 1860s, and possibly some back into the 1840s.

Two marks (that I would love to find out the source of) are "C. W. & CO" and "G W.& J". No one knows what those marks stand for but they are probably the initials of an unidentified glassmaker in Great Britain in the 1850s-1880s time period.

 

[DavidW]

I forgot to mention that looks like it has a pontil, maybe a sand pontil in the center of the bottom? Does the indented circle area on the bottom feel just a bit rougher than the rest of the base? Definitely worth saving!

 

[DavidW]

Hey PinwheelExchange, About that lip, see this page here (on Bill Lindsey's great website) and see the "Mineral / Oil finish" paragraph. That bottle has a "hybrid" or variant kind of lip, with a somewhat rounded upper part of the finish. Check out the photo toward the bottom of that paragraph, on the lower right. He says it is from at least back to 1864. https://sha.org/bottle/finishstyles.htm#Mineral or Double Oil