# Etched lettering on early bottles



## RoyalRuby (Dec 18, 2019)

Was letter etching a common practice on older bottles?, I snipped this pic off the bay for reference, I came across an old torpedo bottle that has etched lettering and wondered if it's real or was added foolishly later on by someone, still wondering if I should buy it or not, I know they aren't rare by any stretch.


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## sandchip (Dec 18, 2019)

Personally, I wouldn't put a whole lot of confidence in most etched examples being original unless I dug them myself.  A time consuming process that wouldn't be feasible for commercial mass production.  Having a mold made for embossing bottles would be cheaper.  Most authentic etched bottles seem to be limited run items like backbar whiskey decanters, etc.


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## slugplate (Dec 18, 2019)

Hi RoyalRuby, the bottle itself is old, but common and most likely contained mineral water... they were never etched! So personally, I'd pass. I find quite a few of those digging and they're all slicks.


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## nhpharm (Dec 18, 2019)

Sandblasting of bottles was pretty common with British bottles (which the one that is pictured is).  I have even seen a few US bottles that were sandblasted.  It was a cheap way of marking your bottles without having a mold made.  The bottle pictured is legit...the torpedo certainly could be.  I have seen some old bottles that were sandblasted in modern times as well...it's easy to do, but most of those frauds have been seltzer bottles.  Etching is a bit of a different story as I have typically only seen that on seltzer bottles where they wanted a lot of detail (hard to get good detail with sandblasting).


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## Brewster113 (Dec 18, 2019)

I have been to two different collections recently and they both had a Hutchinson bottle with etching rather than embossing. (I will try to post a picture of at least one of them)
In regards to how they did the etching I do not believe that sand blasting was used but acid etching would be ( hydrofloric acid) Being a sand blaster on cemetery headstones and having blasted glass I find the surface texture on these bottles fine and even texture. Sandblasting glass is not as even and details not as well defined and can be much more aggressive. 
Bruce


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## WesternPA-collector (Dec 18, 2019)

Lots of shady questionable sellers on Ebay. The sad thing is you can't even call them out on it because all they do is block and they continue to do what they are doing. But some people buying on there simply want a bottle that looks nice on a shelf and don't care if it's original or not.


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## CanadianBottles (Dec 18, 2019)

It was certainly done, not super common in North America but there are examples out there.  Usually a cheap way for a smaller firm to mark their bottles without shelling out for custom embossing.  As others have said the difficulty is telling the legit ones from the fakes, but I haven't come across a lot of non-seltzer bottles which have been faked in this way.  I suspect if someone was going to be going to the effort to fake one of these they would add something more interesting than "R. White Manchester", like the Coca Cola logo or something.  What's even worse than the etching is where I'm originally from the earliest bottles were marked by scratching with a nail!  No way to know one of those is legit if you didn't dig it yourself.


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## RoyalRuby (Dec 18, 2019)

Thanks for all the replies, I'll get a picture of it next time I go to where it's at and post it, maybe get some more positive answers on the bottle in question.


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