Renaissance Woman

 A neighbour the other day asked me to look at a cool bottle she had in her house. It was a Ricketts' bottle, made in the three-piece mould that transformed the bottle making industry starting in the 1820s. Olive Jones, in 1982, wrote an article called "The Contribution of the Ricketts' Mold To the Manufacture of the English 'Wine' Bottle, 1820-1850." It had been found on a beach in Europe somewhere. Before Ricketts' mould, bottle makers had been using a "dip mould." This was a mould that would have been shaped like a large cup - and that helped make bottles a more standard size. The body of the bottle was made in the dip mould, but the rest of the bottle was shaped by hand. The shoulder, neck, and finish of the bottles were, therefore, not very uniform and often had a bulge where the top of the dip mould ended. Henry Ricketts, in 1821, patented the first mould that shaped not only the body of the bottle, but also the shoulder and neck. It added ...

 In this collection from False Creek that I've been studying, I've noticed a couple of things about French-made bottles. It appears that the French didn't like to have mould seams on their bottles. There is evidence on at least some of them that they either used turn moulds or they heat-treated their bottles after they were made to remove the seams. This is only an hypothesis. And as of yet I have no proof. But here is a Perrier bottle. Perrier in 1910 got Owens Machines with which to make their bottles. The feathered scar on the bottom is the telling characteristic of Owens machines.   This bottle is also from Perrier, but my hypothesis is that it looks like heat-treated may have been applied after production to remove mould seams and blur the feathered Owens scar. The Owens scar is maybe a bit of a stretch, but the mould seams definitely look like they've been mostly obliterated. bottle bottle base showing feathered scar dulled by heat treating bottle showing seams th...