# Historical bottle.photos



## rickmarbles (Feb 8, 2022)

Curious to see if anyone has ever seen an old photograph with a blob top style soda actually in a picture from the period.   The bottles are captivating to me for their immediate ability to conjure images from the distant past.  The are clearly a relic from a different time.  But the context of their purchase and usage is sparse.  Would love to see one incidentally noted in an old photo


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## bottle-bud (Feb 8, 2022)

I captured this photo off the internet and it is a picnic scene showing some blob type bottles. The amber bottle is clearly a blob bottle, probable a cider as I have one like it in my collection. The clear bottles with paper labels don't appear to be crown tops so I am not sure. The photo may be a picnic in Fenton Missouri along the Meramec River. Circa 1880-1890.


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## rickmarbles (Feb 8, 2022)

That's a great photo.  Thanks for posting


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## CanadianBottles (Feb 8, 2022)

bottle-bud said:


> I captured this photo off the internet and it is a picnic scene showing some blob type bottles. The amber bottle is clearly a blob bottle, probable a cider as I have one like it in my collection. The clear bottles with paper labels don't appear to be crown tops so I am not sure. The photo may be a picnic in Fenton Missouri along the Meramec River. Circa 1880-1890.


That amber bottle looks like a Duffy Malt Whiskey to me.  The others are hard to identify for sure, but I'm leaning towards them being early crown tops.


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## CanadianBottles (Feb 8, 2022)

Took me a while to find one, but here's an unambiguous photo of a blob top with the wire top from the Civil War.


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## rickmarbles (Feb 12, 2022)

That's great, I had googled and failed, thanks


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## willong (Feb 12, 2022)

rickmarbles said:


> Curious to see if anyone has ever seen an old photograph with a blob top style soda actually in a picture from the period.   The bottles are captivating to me for their immediate ability to conjure images from the distant past.  The are clearly a relic from a different time.  But the context of their purchase and usage is sparse.  Would love to see one incidentally noted in an old photo


If you search through vintage logging photos, such as those images recorded by Darius Kinsey, you will occasionally see blob top bottles hanging on the side of a log being bucked or a tree being felled. I'm also pretty sure that I  spotted such a saw lubricant bottle--they held kerosene that both dissolved pitch, which would cause drag, and lubricated the saw blade--sitting on the lower, flat surface of a huge undercut in which two loggers were posing, but can't recall if it was a blob top.

However, the bottles were not typically soda bottles as the loggers needed to carry a larger quantity of oil to get through a full day of cutting (bushelers* did not work six-hour shifts in those days). Typically, the loggers would bind a blacksmith-forged hook to the neck of a quart beer bottle, which enabled them to keep the lubricant nearby lodged into the bark of the tree. Avoiding pitch sap concentrated at the base of the tree, together with the large butt-swell of huge western timber, was the reason that so many historical photos picture the fallers perched on springboards, often eight or ten feet above the ground.

* See definition at http://www.puresimplicity.net/~heviarti/Logging_Terms.html

A saw oil bottle is visible in the photo below, though it looks more like a whiskey or other liquor bottle.





The example below--I believe it is a reproduction in an interpretive forest (outdoor museum)--is only about pint size and its hook appears to be twisted wire, but it illustrates the practice:


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## willong (Feb 12, 2022)

The oil bottles stayed in service until the adoption of power saws with their self-contained oil reservoirs. Here is a photo of a bucker working in 1945:



 In addition to the bottle hanging just above and to the left of the saw blade, note the maul and the wedge at the top of the cut. That type of steel wedge flared wide to provide more surface area and thus more force to keep the cut open and prevent the saw being pinched. My parents found such a wedge while hand clearing a small portion of acreage they once owned near Arlington, WA. The property had beautiful second growth fir, hemlock, cedar and spruce growing on it; but the most impressive things were the old growth cedar stumps left over from late nineteenth century logging. Several of the stumps exceeded a dozen feet in diameter; quite a few had hollow cores. Unfortunately, the wedge was lost during a move--sure wish I still had it.

WL


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## rickmarbles (Feb 17, 2022)

Those are great images and information.  Thanks for posting and sharing your knowledge


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## hemihampton (Feb 18, 2022)

Here's 2 old Civil War Pics I've had saved on my Computer for many Years. I had more but can't find them. LEON.


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## hemihampton (Feb 18, 2022)

another.


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## CanadianBottles (Feb 19, 2022)

willong said:


> If you search through vintage logging photos, such as those images recorded by Darius Kinsey, you will occasionally see blob top bottles hanging on the side of a log being bucked or a tree being felled. I'm also pretty sure that I  spotted such a saw lubricant bottle--they held kerosene that both dissolved pitch, which would cause drag, and lubricated the saw blade--sitting on the lower, flat surface of a huge undercut in which two loggers were posing, but can't recall if it was a blob top.
> 
> However, the bottles were not typically soda bottles as the loggers needed to carry a larger quantity of oil to get through a full day of cutting (bushelers* did not work six-hour shifts in those days). Typically, the loggers would bind a blacksmith-forged hook to the neck of a quart beer bottle, which enabled them to keep the lubricant nearby lodged into the bark of the tree. Avoiding pitch sap concentrated at the base of the tree, together with the large butt-swell of huge western timber, was the reason that so many historical photos picture the fallers perched on springboards, often eight or ten feet above the ground.
> 
> ...


That's really interesting, I didn't know about the oil bottles.  Sometimes in BC I would come across a single smashed liquor bottle way out in the woods and was imagining some loggers downing a whole quart of whisky while on the job, but now I suspect that those were actually oil bottles.


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