"Whittled" blob top bottle question - swirl

[steveinlanc]

I have a neat C. HEILEMANN PHILADA blob top bottle that has really heavy "whittling" on the neck. If you run your thumb around the neck it feels like the ridges on the side of a coin.

Anyway, part of the whittling visibly comes down off the neck like a ribbon and swirls down and around the body, like a stripe on a barber pole, making almost two complete revolutions around the bottle and cutting across the embossing in several places.

Is this kind of effect common to whittled bottles? It looks cool as all get-out, even with the bottle needing more cleaning, but I've never seen this before. Here's a photo of where it starts. If this really excites anyone I'll put really big photos up on a web page showing the whole thing.

 

[steveinlanc]

Big photos are up at http://imageserver.lancaster-internet.net/heilemann/

I'd really love to hear some opinions about this bottle and if there are many like it out there.

 

[steveinlanc]

Ok well now I'm more confused about "whittled".

Reggie's glossary says:

Whittled - curved line (or stretch) marks that run vertically along the neck of the bottle, caused by hand finishing of glass when lip is twisted onto the neck

Which is what I'm seeing here, especially in light of the blob being worked heavily over the outside of the sheared lip as much as 1/2 inch. But you say stretching lobes, and I look on ebay and sellers call anything remotely crude in way "whittled".

So is there a consensus in the majority of what "whittled" is ?

 

[GuntherHess]

Those lines running down the body look like etching from being buried to me.

Whittling was typically caused by blowing glass in mold that werent warmed up to proper temperature.

https://www.antique-bottles.net/forum/m-97065/mpage-1/key-whittled/tm.htm#97065

 

[steveinlanc]

Gunter go to http://imageserver.lancaster-internet.net/heilemann/ and look at the close-up images. This isn't etching, it's absolutely original to the making of the bottle and "embossed" over the top of the surface of the bottle. I understand what you're referring to, but this is ALL glass, not loss.

 

[westernbittersnut]

Those swirling marks are caused the molten glass starting to cool and stiffen up as it stretches across the surface of the iron mold due to the air pressure applied by the glass blower thru the blowpipe.

I have a beautiful Cassin,s Grape Brandy Bitters that has these same marks crossing over all four panels in a wavy pattern. It really adds a lot of character to the glass and enhances the appearance of the bottle.

 

[beendiggin]

Ok well now I'm more confused about "whittled".

Steve...this is a whittled bottle. It looks like it was carved or chipped... some would say it looks like it was blown into a hand carved wooden mold, but as lobey correctly pointed out it's from the mold being cold and the majority of molds were made of metal. However, some early dip molds were made of wood, but those bottles would be of the black glass ale types. Some bottle making tools were wooden, also.

 

[GuntherHess]

http://imageserver.lancaster-internet.net/heilemann/ and look at the close-up images.

I see some vertical stress marks on the neck in your photo. I see some whitish concentric lines that look like ground etching. I dont see anything I would call whittling. Some people might call the stress marks on the neck a whittling effect, I dont think that is the common use of the term whittled.

I dont think I have ever seen a bottle that was verified to be made in a wooden mold. I'd love to see one if anyone has a photo or article link. I wouldnt expect to see any actual wood grain on those since the surface would be carbonized and constantly kept wet to prevent combustion. Supposedly the steam forms an insulating layer between the glass and wood. I would expect to see a lot of stress effects in the glass since a wood mold could never be heated up before glass blowing.

 

[tigue710]

yup, Reggie is dead wrong on that one... you bottle has some nice stretch marks in the neck that were made as the lip was tooled, but not only did the glass twist but it had also cooled to much witch made the glass raise up the way it did as it came into contact with the mold or tool.

Whittle looks exactly like it sounds, like it was whittled...,

You do have a little sickness in that bottle too, the white lines that stretch around the shoulder and body...

 

[beendiggin]

I dont think I have ever seen a bottle that was verified to be made in a wooden mold. I'd love to see one if anyone has a photo or article link.

Heres your link:

From: http://www.sha.org/bottle/body.htm#Dip%20Molds

One-piece round dip molds would leave no classic narrow, raised mold seams on the body of the bottle (more below). Two (or more) piece, shoulder height, round dip molds could potentially leave fitting joint induced vertical mold seams on the body of the bottle. This appears to have been uncommon as the author of this website has never seen a dip molded round bottle with obvious side seams. Although it surely occurred, it was possibly more common in the era prior to that covered by this website. Multi-sided dip mold bottles (pictured below) may likely have been made from multi-part dip molds, though side seams showing the interface between the mold pieces are rarely seen, being either masked by the corner edges of the bottle or the bottle body was fire polished to the point that seams are unrecognizable. Dip molds were made of a variety of materials including wood and harder materials like various metals, clay, and clay lined wood. Wooden dip molds (a common pre-19th century mold material) had to be kept continuously wet in order to survive long the intense heat of molten glass. This allowed steam to form in between the hot glass and mold surface causing the glass to "ride" on the steam cushion making the evidence of molding very difficult to distinguish from free-blown bottles, although this feature did make it easier for the bottle to be removed from the dip mold (Boow 1991). Sometimes the expanding parison would touch the sides of wooden mold before the cushion of steam formed leaving ripples, though this feature may be impossible to positively distinguish the use of a wooden mold versus glass imperfections (e.g., whittle marks) caused in metal molds for other reasons (Tooley 1953; Kendrick 1968; Toulouse 1969b; Jones & Sullivan 1989; Van den Bossche 2001; Deiss pers. comm. 2005).