Antique bottles are of course "old" bottles that aren't made any more. I can tell you what I like and collect. I prefer the hand blown bottles made before the Owens automatic bottle making machine. The Owens machine came on the seen the early part of the 1900's around WWI. Many people collect bottles made after 1900 but I don't. There are exceptions to every rule. Once in a while an unusual and different bottle comes along. Maybe it is the color, or the embossing, or a wonderful old paper label that catches my interest. I even have a few metal tins like the old baking powder tins. But for the most part I collect hand blown glass bottles and the older and cruder the better.
The bottles I collect were made from glass in a sweat shop environment. I can only imagine what the working conditions were like. A half step away from slave labor and there were children working as well. The working conditions were hot, dangerous because of the hot fire and molten glass and probably a hazard of broken glass here and there. A bottle maker was actually a team of workers maybe 4 or 6 individuals probably including a few children. A good bottle team produced 1,000's of bottles a day. There was no retirement plan, no medical insurance, no days off, no holiday pay. I admire my old bottles and these thoughts come to mind about the history of the bottle and of the persons associated with making it. That is a part of history that isn't taught. That is whey labor unions sprang up to protect workers. Eventually thought, the unions became too big and sometimes the companies and also the workers need protection from the unions. But that is a different story. This website is about antique bottles.
So to answer the original question "What are antique bottles?", they are bottles that are no longer manufactured. Probably bottles made into the 1950's can considered antique bottles.
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