High Desert Historic Bottle Website

Grouping of 19th and early 20th century American bottles.

I'm located in south central Oregon (on the Williamson River) - a beautiful area with BIG lakes (Klamath & Agency Lakes), near to Crater Lake National Park and within sight of two snow covered peaks - Mt. Shasta & Mt. McLoughlin (well snow covered much of the year with McLoughlin).

The Klamath Basin is located on the extreme western edge of the high and "cold desert" of eastern Oregon at over 4100' (valley bottom; elevations go up from there). Not real high for the Intermountain West, but just right for cold (but not too cold) winters and warm (but not too warm) summers. It's flora and fauna reflect its proximity to the Great Basin - the so-called "sagebrush ocean."

I (Bill) am a collector (43 years!) of all kinds of older, mouth-blown (not machine-made) American bottles and flasks produced by hand methods from the late 18th through the very early 20th century (pre-1910 + or -).

My collecting tastes run the gamut from early American figured (aka "historical") flasks, bitters, California gold-rush era soda & mineral waters and other Western American bottles, early American utilitarian bottles & flasks, Oregon bottles, etc. I really don't have huge amounts within many of the recognized types or categories of 19th century bottles, but do have something within virtually all types - even some canning jars which are among the most fascinating bottle collecting genres.

In short, I am a generalist at heart with the one exception of medicinal tonics bottles...more later.

New England & Midwestern "Pitkin" flasks produced between the 1790s and 1830s...beautiful!

Due to other priorities I am currently not offering any items via this website; I likely will resume activity later in 2010.

I offer an assortment of bottles, bottle related items and other collectibles for sale via an assortment of other pages within this website; see the hyperlinked list in the green box below. Now retired, I need to pare down the amount of "stuff" I have including divesting the scores of bottles purchased primarily to illustrate the information and concepts contained within the Historic Glass Bottle Identification & Information Website - my other very large, educational website (and discussed further down the page).

Click Bottles For Sale to access the main page for these items. On that page one will find links to the various category specific "bottles for sale" pages. Check back frequently as I periodically add new bottles and items to the pages.

The links in the box below also takes one straight to each of the category specific "bottles for sale" pages:

I also offer some Western Americana & history books via my Books For Sale webpage.

Monument Valley (Arizona) just before an early snow storm - September 1974

Want to know more about historic
American-made bottles?

If you have general questions or want to learn more about historic bottles, click Historic Bottle Website (HBW) to view a very in-depth website I have created (and still working on). The HBW is now hosted by the Society for Historical Archaeology as a joint effort with my ex-employer (retired) the Bureau of Land Management. This site was designed to answer general bottle age & type (i.e. typology or what a bottle was used for) questions for most American-made bottles produced between about 1800 and about 1950. It also provides a wealth of information on glassmaking, bottle & bottle use history, references, glossary, and a lot, lot more. The Historic Bottle Website will continue to refined, expanded and enhanced as long as I'm able, so check in frequently.

If the HBW does not answer your questions you may send an email. If you provide a good detailed description of the bottle in question and include a clear digital picture(s), I will try to help...but no guarantees. Be aware however that there were hundreds of thousands of uniquely different bottles produced during the 19th century into the middle of the 20th century and published information is available for only a very small percentage of them. For example, Ron Fowler ( www.seattlehistorycompany.com ) has cataloged well over 16,500 differently embossed Hutchinson soda bottles alone made between the 1880s and 1910s! However, many physical manufacturing related features of bottles give clues to the age and utility of most bottles. I may not get back immediately (I do get lots of questions) but try to answer all reasonably descriptive and friendly emails within a couple weeks.

Historic Glass Bottle Identification & Information Website

My one incursion into bottle collecting specialization is MEDICINAL TONIC bottles. Not hair tonics, but medicinal tonics where, for example, the word "tonic" is used in the place of the word "bitters" or "cure" - i.e. a Fever & Ague Tonic instead of Fever & Ague Cure. I do not generally collect items where the word Tonic is descriptive instead of the actual product, i.e. Dr. Jayne's Tonic Vermifuge is not a tonic, but a vermifuge with "tonic effects". But I would consider the Wilson's Tonic & Sarsaparillian Elixir to be pretty much of a true tonic bottle. It's a fine line of course, but I'm just after what I consider to be "true" tonic bottles.

I am in the process of compiling a list of all the known, embossed medicinal tonic bottles (though I am also interested in label only ones). My goal is to get as complete a list as possible, including different embossing patterns of the same brand; color, lip and size variations; and all the unique American and Canadian brands. I'm currently up to 400 different tonic bottles & variations! I am striving towards some kind of book (or website?) on the subject in the future.

Click on Medicinal Tonics to see my most updated listing of tonic bottles and for more information on the subject. I am also looking for good quality images of unusual tonic bottles.