Mouth blown screw top

[I have legos]

I'm not sure how this bottle passed quality control, it has a couple major flaws. It appears to have fallen over while the glass in the base was still soft. There is a rather large bulge on the backside near the base and it lays flat without wobbling. The glass around the lip has been ground but it is nowhere near flat. One part sticks up so high you can see where the upper edge of the mold would have been. Seems like this would have interfered with the cap's seal. The suface has a slight orange peel texture to it. The texture near the neck almost looks like wood grain. I suspect that it might have been a wooden mold although it seems unlikely since there is some intricate embossing on it which would have worn out quite quickly. Also I imagine with a screw top you would need a pretty precise mold.

I think it dates from around the turn of the century. It's a three piece mold, I didn't take any pictures of the base. The only mark on it is a single bump in the center, most likely from an air vent. Also, while I was putting this post together the sun came out so I went out and dug around in the same area and turned up a nice four sided diamond profile bottle with "pat'd june 29th 1897 No 27261" on the base. I did a quick search and found one with a label still intact, it was a "syr white pine with tar" bottle. The label has a date of 1906 on it and the embossing on the base has a little more detail than mine does.

Mostly I'm interested in finding out what the original contents of the bottle were. The embossing appears to be S&C although it's quite stylized and hard to tell for sure. It's too small to be a liquor bottle and too big to be perfume or cologne.

 

[I have legos]

Side view of the bulge I mentioned.

 

[I have legos]

Close-up of the texture.

 

[I have legos]

The sloppily finished lip.

 

[I have legos]

A close-up of the embossing.

 

[epackage]

Looks like a whiskey nipper, I've never seen it before... It sure is wonky

 

[beendiggin]

I agree, probably a whisky nip. Would've had a cork lined metal cap.

 

[cacarpetbagger]

What you have is a whiskey flask and a pretty darn good one at that. I am quoting from the 2002 Whiskey Bottles of the Old West by John Thomas. It is I believe #41 a Lilienthal teardrop flask that dates from 1876 to 1880. He says there are three variants, the oldest with no writing on the base the next Patent Applied For on the base and the third just Patent. He also says that they come in two sizes although only the smaller five ounce has been seen. He was accounting for 5 examples known in 2002. In 1969 they were going for $250 in 1977 $350, and the 2002 price listed is $850, could not tell you what one would go for now? Anyway great find and I might suggest a little more digging around that area even if if the sun is not out.

 

[I have legos]

Oh wow that's awesome. I filled it up with water and measured it and it's exactly 6 oz. I guess it was the "20% more free!!" version, lol. I did a little research on it and saw two auctions that both sold for $575 in 2010. One of them had a picture and description that almost perfectly described the one I have except that it still had it's cap. They said it was "very crude" but didn't specify how. Mine has a major defect in it, not sure how much that would affect the value. Also I came across a paper from 2003 that claimed there were 20 known specimens in collections.

Not to bad for someone that only started digging bottles a couple months ago.