The 'production line' consisted of a master glass blower, his apprentice(s), and the carry boys.
The most efficient way to ' mouth blow glass bottles' - especially ones of size was to 'gather' the glass out of the furnace, (see the blob on the end of the stick in the above picture), and blow the hot glass into a mold. The master would blow the hot glass, and it would expand to fit the mold. Then, it would have to be slowly cooled. The 'initial puff' took a lot of lung power, and often this was one of the jobs of the apprentice.
Now, look at the picture below, A 'carry boy' - sometimes a child, but always the low man on the glass blowing totem pole - literally carried the blown glass bottles to the cooling area. See, the black guy holding the bottle? He's the 'carry boy'. The blown glass demi-john (type of bottle) is being carried in a 'snap case' which is how he's pulled the glass from the mold. The blow pipe is being cut off. Then, he'll carry the bottle to the cooling area. That's the manual glass blowing by mouth craft in a nutshell.
These two pictures (above) show the process of blowing a glass bottle. In the glass blowing factory, there would be teams blowing glass into molds for ten to twelve hours a day. It was a system which was completely turned upside down by the bottle making machine invented in 1905. An entire group of craftsmen (glassblowers) and their apprentices and helpers were suddenly out of work because of mechanization of their jobs. Glassblowing went from being a blue collar trade to being obsolete in the manufacturing world.
We had a wonderfully knowledgeable guide (Gary) who is an actual historian, and he has worked at the bottle museum for about twenty years. He knows EVERYTHING about bottles. For instance, bottles are categorized by their shapes. There's a 'whiskey' bottle shape, a 'milk' bottle shape, a 'medicine' bottle' shape. There are shapes called 'figures', as well as things created by the glassblowers playing around with end of the day glass leftovers. These are known as 'whimseys'. I loved the whimsey's.) Here are some:
 |
| The figure in the front is a bank! |
One of my favorite displays were the different bottles associated with the fifty states. The Poland Spring bottle (above) was the "Maine" bottle.
You can guess which state this bottle is associated with:
I thought the variety and colors of medicine bottles were the most interesting. Here's Drake in front of an actual pharmacy counter circa 1900.
Pharmacists compounded their own medications from their stock of powders and tinctures. They kept records usually under the clients' names. Here's a pharmacist's record book:
The museum had a collection of 'poison bottles'. In a time of low literacy, poison bottles couldn't just be labeled with words. The solution to preventing accidental poisonings was to create bottles with raised bumps and/or pictures to indicate poison contents. The second purpose of such 'bumps' was to show by feel in low light, or no light which of your medicine bottles contained poison.
In addition to bottles, the museum had two exhibitions: The first was a collection of stoneware from potteries created from clay deposits along the Hudson River. When the clay was exhausted, the pottery factory either moved or went out of business. Here's a chamber pot manufactured in the 19th century in "West Troy" which is about 25 miles from Saratoga Springs.
 |
| The patriotic theme was handpainted - circa the Civil War |
The other exhibition was a paperweight collection donated by an early supporter of the museum. Here's my favorite paperweight:
Another novelty collection were the glass pieces which contain a small amount of uranium! Under black light, these pieces glow fluorescent green.
Finally, the museum is continually sorting through donated glass bottles. A few are noteworthy and added to the collection, but most are duplicates upon duplicates of items the museum already owns. The museum has devised a clever way to both raise money for the museum as well as send along bottles which they don't wish to add to their collection.
If you donate $5, you get to pick a prize. The staff has wrapped give away bottles in tissue paper, and you select (sight unseen) a bottle from the tissue wrapped pile to take home with you. We donated $10, so I got to pick two bottles from the pile. I scored two glass medicine bottles blown into molds circa 1875! How cool is that!
This museum is well worth a visit. It unfolded to us thanks to the expert and interesting commentary by Gary. My pictures start with scenes from Ballston Spa, New York - the location of the museum, as well as the birthplace of Abner Doubleday. Then, there are more pictures of the contents of the National Bottle Museum. Click on the link if you are interested.
