what do we know about Iron Pontil marks

[baltbottles]

Matt there is an iron pontiled soda from Baltimore marked Cole and Chickerng that dates probably dates 1844 by 1845 the firm was Cole Chickering and Gleason and the bottles were changed to Cole and company.

of the 3 cole and chickering sodas known all are iron pontiled there is however an open pontiled cole and company soda known but i believe this is a glass blowing fluke.

Chris

 

[AntiqueMeds]

thanks , that helps

 

[cowseatmaize]

It was replaced by another improvement (the snap case) around the civil war fairly quickly.

I agree with that for the US but if memory serves it came about in some form a bit earlier.
Anyway, it appears that Mr. Munsey was about spot on with the 1845-70 range after reading this.
What a great topic and so far from the political garbage that makes moderator positions so difficult.
Thanks for bringing it to the table Matt. I think it may be worth a pin to the top or a breakdown as an FAQ.

 

[CazDigger]

Smooth-base snap case bottles (John Clarke Saratoga-type) bottles were made, probably at Mt Vernon glassworks, sometime in 1834-1846, the years he was in business. There are iron pontiled versions of one of the later John Clarke pint bottles (closer to the 1846 date) made at a different glassworks. There are smooth base, sand pontil and iron pontil John Clarke bottles. Keep in mind, different glassworks and different workers used whatever tools they had and were comfotable with. If you were familiar with a particular way of making (mass producing) bottles, human nature says you will use the "old technology" to crank out as many bottles as you could in that shift unless there was a clear advantage. I worked with alot of guys in the 1980s who refused to learn how to use a computer! Placing a date on when a particular new advance was used is difficult at best. It clearly varied widely . As far as iron pontils, I think there are situations noted above where it was better to use, eg. larger bottles, etc. when open pontils or snap case were probably used at the same time for other bottle, eg. smaller medicines.

 

[baltbottles]

I have to agree with Mark that there are many early smooth based bottles that were made along side pontiled bottles. I believe as more research is being done this has become far more obvious to collectors. I think you can safely call 1835-1865 a transitional era where various methods were being employed to hold the bottle while finishing its lip. You could also safely say that by 1870 the snap case had become the clear winner of these methods.

Chris

 

[AntiqueMeds]

there seems to have been various methods use in the same glass house at the same time based on the type of bottle being made.
For instance a beer may have been held with a bare iron punty while a small medicine might have been held with a plow pipe rod.

No question there are quite a few early smooth based bottles, especially the small flint medicines.
I'm not conviced they were manipulated with a snap case though.

 

[kungfufighter]

Paraphrasing here but Helen McKearin once wrote that "any discussions of dating glass should be punctuated with commas rather than periods."

 

[div2roty]

Paraphrasing here but Helen McKearin once wrote that "any discussions of dating glass should be punctuated with commas rather than periods."

Meaning that not everything was known or that there are always exceptions?

 

[saratogadriver]

I'd say "C, all of the above".

I think for a decade or more, all these ways of manufacturing overlapped each other, depending on who the gaffer was or which factory was doing the work, or what tools were warmed up on a particular day. And, sadly, a lot of the knowledge of such detail is long since lost.

Jim G

ORIGINAL: div2roty

Paraphrasing here but Helen McKearin once wrote that "any discussions of dating glass should be punctuated with commas rather than periods."

Meaning that not everything was known or that there are always exceptions?

 

[bottlekid76]

I believe for the most part it has been generally accepted that iron pontiled sodas ended right around the 1860 mark, but i've always been curious as to how long after that they were possibly still being made that way. Great topic Matt!

~Tim