Question about bottles..

[Mjbottle]

Hi everyone! I was wondering if it was a common practice for canadian bottlers to use american made bottles or vice versa? Did this happen often? Rarely? Or not at all? Thanks for any help or info!

 

[Mjbottle]

I should have been more specific, my question is mainly about soda bottles in the 20's 30's and 40's....

 

[CanadianBottles]

Doesn't seem to have been common at all. I've seen a few US-made bottles used by Canadian bottlers over the years but the vast majority were made here in Canada. I'm not aware of any US bottlers ordering bottles from Canadian glassmakers but it's possible a few could exist, definitely not a common practice though.
When Canadian bottlers did import bottles it was typically from the UK, but among soda bottlers the practice seems to have totally died out by the 20s. Before that you would see a lot of UK-made sodas out west. It was also fairly common for Canadian breweries to use British bottles around the turn of the 20th century and to a lesser degree again in the mid-20th century, but in that case it was just importing generic bottles rather than special-ordering embossed bottles. I believe the embossed beers were mostly if not always made locally.

 

[Mjbottle]

Doesn't seem to have been common at all. I've seen a few US-made bottles used by Canadian bottlers over the years but the vast majority were made here in Canada. I'm not aware of any US bottlers ordering bottles from Canadian glassmakers but it's possible a few could exist, definitely not a common practice though.
When Canadian bottlers did import bottles it was typically from the UK, but among soda bottlers the practice seems to have totally died out by the 20s. Before that you would see a lot of UK-made sodas out west. It was also fairly common for Canadian breweries to use British bottles around the turn of the 20th century and to a lesser degree again in the mid-20th century, but in that case it was just importing generic bottles rather than special-ordering embossed bottles. I believe the embossed beers were mostly if not always made locally.

Thanks for the info canadian bottles, what made me ask the question was i saw a canadian paper label bottle with an owens illinois mark on the bottom, my first thought was that it wasnt the original bottle that the label was on, but then i researched the company and saw that they had many american plants and one canadian plant so i got to thinking that maybe instead of making new bottles they just sent some up from the states, im not sure if thats a fair assumption but after reading what you wrote it makes me think it could be possible...thanks again!

 

[CanadianBottles]

Thanks for the info canadian bottles, what made me ask the question was i saw a canadian paper label bottle with an owens illinois mark on the bottom, my first thought was that it wasnt the original bottle that the label was on, but then i researched the company and saw that they had many american plants and one canadian plant so i got to thinking that maybe instead of making new bottles they just sent some up from the states, im not sure if thats a fair assumption but after reading what you wrote it makes me think it could be possible...thanks again!

It's definitely be possible that they just used the same bottles on both sides of the border. If it's an unmarked bottle then another possibility is that they were just using whatever bottles they could get their hands on for cheap second hand. In that case it could have been on pretty much anything. Determining if a label is original is tough, I usually base that more on the condition of the label and whether I can find any other examples of the label online, rather than the type of bottle itself.