It’s been a while since we’ve shared our variety of bottle collections. An old bottle is a great way to upcycle – use to keep pens, show off a small bouquet or a single flower, or just add to a windowsill with a sprig of ivy. Check out just a few of our collections in the store.
Milk Bottles
Medicine Bottles
Do you love flowers? Well, our collection of bottles can give you beautiful cut flower containers. Consider these for a bud face or simple flower:
CLICK ON OUR BOTTLES category (on the right side of our page) to see more complete posts about our many bottles available.
Vintage Bottles
Whether you have a windowsill filled with tiny bottles or a cabinet filled with your collection, we encourage you to stop into Bahoukas Antique Mall to see if one – or a dozen – might add to your collection or to your decor!
We have a wonderful collection of salt cellars and small bottles that are absolutely perfect for creating a little ‘life’ in your fall and holiday decor.
Small Bottles…
Consider adding a wee bit of soil or moss to the bottom of an exquisite cut glass salt cellar, then adding a tiny plant. There are even small bulbs that can root in one of these.
In the bottles, add a bit of water and a sprig of ivy to create a bit of ‘life’ on a shelf or table.
… even dried flowers
You can also add some wonderful dried flowers – a stalk or two of lavender for example – to add a beautiful bit of nature to your decor.
Here at Bahoukas Antique Mall we have a variety of salt cellars, tiny dishes, tea cups, bottles (large and small) and even planters to help you bring a bit of the outdoors in. And yes, We’ll be watchin’ for ya!
What is it about those tiny bottles we find in antique stores? So many sizes, shapes, colors, they’re just fascinating.
We have a wonderful collection of tiny bottles.
This selection has a few larger blue bottles. Can’t you picture them lining a window sill. Maybe you see them with a few wildflowers or a single white stem: a petunia, or a single white rose, or maybe just a beautiful white daisy.
No matter how you use them, tiny bottles make for a wonderful ‘collection’ and add a bit of personality to your home or office. Stop by soon, we’ll be watchin’ for ya!
These bottles are beautiful and decorative. They would be lovely with a flower or two, or just sitting on a window sill reflecting the sunshine.
Besides Corning, did you know there’s a wonderful glass museum in S. New Jersey?
The American glass industry began in southern New Jersey because of its availability of natural resources such as wood, sand, soda ash, and silica. The nation’s earliest successful glass factory was founded in 1739 by Caspar Wistar in nearby Salem County. Many of the nation’s foremost glass factories operate in South Jersey.
In 1888, Dr. Theodore Corson Wheaton, a pharmacist, began making his own pharmaceutical bottles in a glass factory in Millville. From these beginnings, today’s giant glass manufacturer, Wheaton USA (formerly Wheaton Industries, Inc.), evolved.
In the early 1960s, Dr. Wheaton’s grandson, Frank H. Wheaton, Jr., visited the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. He discovered that much of the glass created and produced in southern New Jersey was displayed in this museum. He felt that these treasured museum pieces should be displayed in the areas in which they were produced…southern New Jersey.
These bottles were popular in the mid-Atlantic region.
Residents of New Jersey north of Burlington County might not be completely familiar with Wheaton bottles, but Delaware Valleyans might consider them old friends. For at least a generation, a living room wasn’t complete without one on display.
If you lived in southern New Jersey, you regularly encountered these distinctive and brightly colored bottles featuring reliefs of famous individuals from history.
The above photo is a small history of bottles all in one photo and available at Bahoukas Antique Mall. They include a beautiful torpedo soda bottle with a blob top from Greene King & Sons Limited of Bury, St. Edmonds. There are two ink bottles: igloo shaped and cone shaped, a Kiehl & Kiefer blog top soda bottle, a Wagner Ginger Ale bottle, a clay bottle for Weiss Beer Brewery (Baltimore), and a Chas. Zech glass soda bottle.
This link to history of bottles, from the Society for Historical Archaeology Inc. website, gives an outstanding amount of information regarding the bottles we’ve displayed. It shares the details on the many styles of ink bottles that were made.
The ink bottle to the left is called an ‘igloo style’ by J & IEM. Here’s an interesting quote about the use of ink before the late 1800s from the Society for Historical Archaeology Inc. website.
In Europe, glass inkwells dating from the early 18th century have been noted and advertisements for ink bottles date at least as early as the 1770s (Van den Bossche 2001; Faulkner 2009). Historically, it was not until the late 18th to early 19th century that ink was commonly available commercially in liquid form. Up until that time the most common commercial forms were as wafers, cakes, sticks, or as a powder from which the purchaser/user would add water to make ink. Druggists as well as printers, stationary and bookshop keepers often prepared, bottled, and sold ink during the 19th century and before in the New World (McKearin & Wilson 1978).
This Chas. Zech vintage soda bottle from Lancaster, PA is a crown top soda bottle.
The left photo shows a blob top bottle. The one below shows the crown top. This page from Aqua Explorersgives a wonderful history of bottle tops throughout history.
Another very interesting early glass bottle is the Torpedo Bottle, shown below. Here’s a link to a bit more information regarding the torpedo style vintage bottle – “The idea was that the soda kept in contact with the cork and stopped the cork from shrinking.”
This vintage bottle of Kiehl & Kiefer is a blob top soda bottle. What’s really beautiful is the “K” on the back side of the bottle,
Appropriately we happen to have a Christian Wagner Ginger Ale vintage bottle with crown top, (Oh, you didn’t know that George ‘Bahoukas’ is really George Wagner!)
The final vintage piece is a clay bottle by Sandkuhler’s for Weiss Beer Brewery of Baltimore.
Stop in to Bahoukas in Havre de Grace and discover great buys and learn a little history in the most leisurely way!