Historical information

This small green bottle has been handmade by a glassblower and is the typical shape of a carbonated soda or mineral water bottle. It was made from 1840s-1870s. The bottle was found in the coastal waters of Victoria about 100 years from when it was made. It is part of the John Chance Collection.

Glassblowers made bottles like this one by blowing air through a long pipe and into molten glass at the end of it. The shape of the glass would be blown out to fit into the shape of the cylindrical dip mould. Once it set, the glass was removed from the mould and the glassblower would continue using the pipe to create the neck and another ponty tool to push up and form the base. The bottle would be cracked off the end of the glassblower’s pipe and a blob of molten glass would be wrapped around the top of the neck and shaped to finish the lip of the bottle. The seal was usually a cork, held in place with a ball-wire fitting attached between the upper and lower parts of the neck finish.

This style of handmade bottles usually had thick glass so that it could be heat-sterilised, then re-filled. The bottles would often have horizontal bubbles in the applied finish, caused by twisting the glass, and vertical bubbles and diagonal lines in the body from it being blown, and a pontil mark in the base where the ponty tool had been attached.

Significance

Although the bottle is not linked to a particular shipwreck, it is recognised as being historically significant as an example of bottles imported for use in Colonial Victoria in the mid-to-late 1800s.

The bottle is also significant as it was recovered by John Chance, a diver in Victoria’s coastal waters in the late 1960s to early 1970s. Items that come from several wrecks have since been donated to the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village’s museum collection by his family, illustrating this item’s level of historical value.

Physical description

Bottle; green glass, soda or mineral water style, handmade. Rough applied finish, blob double ring collar; upper is wide and rounded, lower is a narrow ring. Diagonal lines in glass on neck. Low shoulder mould seam. Body is matt, tapers inward towards base. Shoulder and neck are shiny. Push-up base with pontil mark, visible through glass. Marks on heel, glass thickness varies. Uneven base. Bubble in glass. Sediment on inside surfaces.