Super crude and early little bottle and (matching?) dosage/shot glass pontil pair. Possible 18th century or earlier Colonial?

[Shades of History]

I bought this sweet little pair of pontil items for $36 plus $10 shipping, so just under $50 all said and done. The bottle is about 2.75 inches. These are very blantantly and obviously legit, but hard for me to date exactly since the features could be present on stuff from the 1600's to like 1820(guessing 1700s though personally). These look completely free blown with open pontils and massive crudeness. Both have heavy base wear for such small items and are made of thick clear flint glass that's super thick at the base. The bottle has a little more haze/surface wear, but the glass is super crude too and has bubbles and black pot stones. So much character here, what a bang for the buck. How old do you guys think they are?

 

[Harry Pristis]

The images are inadequate to say much about the glass.

 

[Shades of History]

The images are inadequate to say much about the glass.

I'll try to take some closer and more accurate ones specifically of the base wear and crudeness. The neck of the bottle is striated/almost twisted like. These are super crude, but my photography skills might be a bit lacking.

 

[CanadianBottles]

That's an interesting one. I'm thinking it's from somewhere other than North America, that bottle looks pretty different than any American glass I've seen.

 

[Shades of History]

I'll try to get some better pics of both the bottle and glass tomorrow.

 

[Harry Pristis]

I'll try to get some better pics of both the bottle and glass tomorrow.

Do you have editing software that came with your camera or with your scanner? Use the image-editing software (or download shareware from the Internet).

You can be as creative as you want to be with the editing software, but the following basic things will improve anyone's images:

GROUP IMAGES of more than one or two bottles are not effective. The more individual bottles in an image, the greater the amount of table-top is in the image. Viewers cannot see the details of a bottle that might take up less than five percent of the total image. Photograph a single bottle (or two or three, if they're tiny), and post that image.

DON'T OBSCURE details of the bottle by pinching it between your fingers. If you want to use fingers to provide scale, support the bottle from below ... that is, on top of your fingers. To improve the focus, rest your hand with the bottle on a stable surface like a table or desk. But, it’s usually best to avoid cluttering the background of the image with anything extraneous.

SCALE is important. Provide measurements of your bottle in millimeters and inches for the widest audience. Don't use a coin for scale; there are many foreign subscribers who don't know your coin's size.

LIGHT IT UP. Use as much ambient light as possible to reduce shadows...two light sources are a minimum. Ambient light is usually more effective than flash which produces flares. Eliminate yellowed images caused by tungsten filament bulbs by switching to the new compact flourescent bulbs. CFLs come in a "daylight" (6500K) version that you can use in any (non-dimming) fixture and produce very little heat. Some LEDs produce a near-daylight effect.

ELIMINATE SHADOWS by elevating the bottle on a glass or colorless plastic stage a couple of inches above the background. Illuminate the bottle AND THE BACKGROUND in this configuration. There are numerous things around the house to use for this purpose, from scrap window-glass to disposable plastic food/drink containers. Colorless glass is best placed 3 or 4 feet from a diffuse light source like a lampshade or bright window.

BRIGHTEN AND CONTRAST. BRIGHTEN the image in the imaging software until the bottle appears slightly washed, then adjust the CONTRAST until the bottle is bright and sharp and is a good color-match. Practice this until you get a feel for it.

CROP, CROP, CROP. Again, use the image-editing software to crop the image to only what is pertinent. Leave only a narrow margin around the bottle. The more of your kitchen counter-top in the image, the smaller the bottle image will be.

REDUCE THE FILE SIZE. The images directly from a camera may be too large for posting directly to a forum, or you may be severely limited in the number of images you can post. You can constrain the proportions of your image to produce exactly the size that works best (I routinely use 700 Kb - 1.0 Mb for my images now). I save in JPEG format.

 

[saratogadriver]

I don't think the shot glass is as old as you think but that's based on my feeling on the form of it. The other certainly has some indicia of age, but the form doesn't quite look right for American for me. Ditto the pontil. I'd guess continental but that's just a guess.

Don't take wear as a sure indicia of age. Wear has been faked forever and, if you ever look at your favorite scotch glass that you've used for years, you may be surprised how much wear is on there. Real wear indicates use, but not necessarily age.

 

[slugplate]

Got me by the short hairs. The bottle 'appears' to be a flared, rolled lip... hard to tell. It is definitely wonky though. I have two guesses... not American or it's a poorly blown chemical bottle.