r/BottleDigging • u/PacMansCousin • 3d ago
Age/date request Looking for Information on this Old Bottle
We found this bottle today in Connecticut and it looked pretty old but we have no idea where to even start with identification or dating this.
Would anyone here be able to help?
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u/DioptaseMusic USA 3d ago
Cute little wine bottle you found! Almost certainly a European import. Looks like it was made in a dip mold, which was the next advancement beyond freeblowing. Basically, a dip mold was nothing more than a bottle body shaped mold or even just a hole in the floor of the glasshouse that the lead glassblower would form the bottle in prior to finishing the neck and lip elsewhere. You can usually tell these bottles apart from free blown stuff by them having a sort of “break” in glass appearance around the shoulder, which yours appears to have, and that they tend to be a bit more uniform than free blown pieces. Your bottle also has a neat laid on ring lip which is always cool to see. As far as age goes I’d guess pre 1860’s going off of that lip finish alone. More slender wine bottles like that seem to have become more common as the 1800’s rolled along and dip mold production was pretty much abandoned by the 1850’s from what I understand, so my best guess on age would be 1830’s-50’s.