For The Love Of Port

i went looking for a nice big port bottle to cut in two. i wanted to use the bottom as a planter and the top maybe as a hanging light.

and pretty quick i found something interesting at a second hand market.. a big Sandeman bottle, a very big one, a Methuselah. (empty though )
all the seller could tell me was that he found it on the attic at his father-in-laws. since the seller looked like he's well in his 60's, maybe 70 and he doesn't recall ever seeing it before they found it i guess it's quite old. so i was wondering if anyone here has ever seen one of these.

there is no label. the glass is very uneven and has air bubbles and other faults in it. the oval emblem on the glass has SANDEMANS PORT written in relief but it's just barely visible and impossible to photograph. no other markings anywhere.
the bottom has a shallow indentation but it is an even depth over most of the surface. quite flat really.
there is a clear vertical line in the glass so it was made in 2 parts at least.
it's 55cm high and 14cm wide.

now i'm doubting if i should cut it. it would make a nice lamp but since there is nothing written on the lower half it would quite a dull looking planter...

and the brand name. almost invisible. if you look carefully you might be able to see ANDE on this picture

Don’t cut it for two reasons. First, those old glass bottles often shatter due to all the air bubbles in them.

Second, old bottles like that are rare and should be saved for history.

Cool bottle and find.

so do you think it's really old or that it's made to look old?

Bert VD wrote:so do you think it's really old or that it's made to look old?

That one is old. The rippled glass from a long time ago. I'd guess the 1920's or older.

Bert VD wrote:and the brand name. almost invisible. if you look carefully you might be able to see ANDE on this picture

Seems weird that the brand name would be off center, or am I looking at the wrong clues?

I can't see ANDE but I think I can see the tops of MAN.

Bert VD wrote:so do you think it's really old or that it's made to look old?

Speculating on glass age is fraught with problems. There's a glass website that I've referenced here before that basically says don't do it, you'll be wrong. That said, I don't know any modern (post 1950) wine bottles that has air bubbles in them like that. At least I haven't seen any for wine use. So anytime from around the 1950's and older. Exactly how old, no clue. Of course, I could be way off too

Glenn E. wrote:

Bert VD wrote:and the brand name. almost invisible. if you look carefully you might be able to see ANDE on this picture

Seems weird that the brand name would be off center, or am I looking at the wrong clues?

I can't see ANDE but I think I can see the tops of MAN.

the word sandemans spans the whole oval from left to right. S is on the edge, the A is where you see the dark green go to brighter, then N and D are under the white line of reflected light and the E under where the big patch of white reflection starts. the last S is just visible on the other edge.

Bert VD wrote:

Glenn E. wrote:

Bert VD wrote:and the brand name. almost invisible. if you look carefully you might be able to see ANDE on this picture

Seems weird that the brand name would be off center, or am I looking at the wrong clues?

I can't see ANDE but I think I can see the tops of MAN.

the word sandemans spans the whole oval from left to right. S is on the edge, the A is where you see the dark green go to brighter, then N and D are under the white line of reflected light and the E under where the big patch of white reflection starts. the last S is just visible on the other edge.

Ah... right, it says SANDEMANS and not just SANDEMAN. I wasn't paying close enough attention.

That would explain why I thought it was off center.

A few years ago I bought an old Sandeman imperial bottle in an auction. Empty and with no label, but with the name Sandeman very clearly applied to the shoulder. There is no evidence of a past capsule, which makes me wonder whether this was always empty and intended to be a window display piece for wine merchants.

Age is hard to ascertain, but it holds 5.6 litres - so 8 x 70cL rather than 8 x 75cL.

I agree with Andy, aside from the historical interest, it is almost impossible to cut old glass cleanly. Any glazier will tell you that whist it is easy to cut new glass, when it gets a few years old it changes form and rarely breaks where you want it to - funny stuff, glass..

so i guess this one will not get cut.

it does however clearly show it had a cork and capsule and traces of sediment in the bottle. so it was not just a display piece.

The rippled glass is indicative of pre 1900 bottles. None of my ports from the 1920s have this rippled glass and they are all machine made bottles. You mention the seams which indicates a mold.Your bottle was probably hand blown into a mold. A large size like this is relatively rare and is worth money on ebay since it is embossed with a brand name. Not a fortune on ebay but much more than cutting it which probably would not work as others have mentioned.

The rippled glass is indicative of pre 1900 bottles.

Only because of the lo-tech manufacturing method. Bottles made in small production volumes are often made using very old equipment - the Symington and TFP VP bottles with applied shoulder badges from the seventies and eighties show a wide spectrum of glass weights, indicative of ancient machinery - much more so than most of the bottles used in the 1960s English bottlings.

Shawn Denkler wrote:The rippled glass is indicative of pre 1900 bottles. None of my ports from the 1920s have this rippled glass and they are all machine made bottles. You mention the seams which indicates a mold.Your bottle was probably hand blown into a mold. A large size like this is relatively rare and is worth money on ebay since it is embossed with a brand name. Not a fortune on ebay but much more than cutting it which probably would not work as others have mentioned.

That’s not correct. I’ve got bottles from the 1950’s that I know where made then that have rippled and bubbled glass.

Tom is correct. And As I said, it’s almost impossible to tell when a glass bottle was made by looking at it. Do some googling and when you find the glass expert sites they all say that. If I wanted to pay someone I could have them make a bottle that would appear to be over 100 years old.


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Andy Velebil wrote:I’ve got bottles from the 1950’s that I know where made then that have rippled and bubbled glass.

I'm curious what you have from the 1950's that has rippled glass. Bottles were reused constantly and just because it is bottled in the 1950s does not mean that it is made then.

Bottles were reused constantly

Up until the 1920s re-used bottles are quite common. Re-use then sharply declines up to WWII. In the aftermath one might have expected a resurgence as post-war shortages extended to glass bottles, but there's little evidence of this, and instead some bottlings from the late forties used US made bottles.

Some years ago I spied some unknown bottles in a Cambridge sale that had pale brown glass, flat punts and the word 'liquor' on the base, which I guessed to be American. Hoping these would prove to be from the 45/47/48 vintage era I pitched hard to buy them, only to find that they were Noval '70 - some bloody college in the city had re-used the American bottles..

i had a chat with a guy who is selling old bottles (19th century and older) in London today. And because he knows quite a bit about it i mentioned this one.
in his opinion it's a bottle made with a 3 part mechanical mold and that dates it around 1900, give or take 10 years. but still it's an educated guess as these techniques don't just disappear suddenly.