[Illustration: uncaptioned]
Perhaps the oldest use for glass bottles has been the storage and
transport of alcohol. Some of the oldest bottles from the Middleton
Place privy are wine and spirits bottles. Bottles made in the same dark
green glass as the three pictured below left were used by the earliest
colonists for various wines and spirits, and, although the bottle shapes
have varied over the centuries, the tradition continues in the green
wine bottles of the present day.
With the improvement of glassmaking techniques in the nineteenth
century, alcohol bottles became more diverse and specialized. Although a
simple cylindrical bottle (Fig. 20B) remained a standard for various
types of spirits, flasks, like those later used by the South Carolina
Dispensary (Fig. 22B and C), became more and more common for whiskey.
Beer bottles developed a distinctive shape (Fig. 21), and different
shapes evolved for different types of wines. Figure 20A is a Bordeaux
wine bottle, used since the early nineteenth century for the sauternes
and clarets of the French Bordeaux district. The amber miniature shown
in Figure 20D is a two-ounce sample bottle of the shape normally used
for German Rhine wines. By the beginning of the twentieth century, most
types of alcohol bottles could be purchased in miniature sizes for use
in advertising and promotion.
[Illustration: Figure 20. Wine and spirits bottles. A. Turn-molded,
probably c. 1870s. B. Three-piece mold, c. 1850-1880. C. Three-piece
mold, sand pontil, c. 1820-1880. D. Rhine wine sample bottle, c.
1870s-1920s.]