About Pontiled Sodas

The term "sodas" in the antique bottle collecting hobby has come to represent a wide variety of carbonated beverage bottle types from the 1830's to the 1940's including many post civil war bottle types. These include the Hutchinson, gravitating stopper, crown top, applied color label or ACL and so on. These are all descriptive terms that help identify the form, style and period of manufacture of the bottle. Many post civil war era bottles are identified by the various types of closures that evolved during the period of reconstruction and industrialization following the war.

In an effort to narrow an extremely wide range of soda "types", I will focus here on pre-civil war sodas, and we'll limit our discussion to American pre-civil war examples as well.

"A Soda" by any other name . . .

Even if we narrow our discussion to pre-civil war sodas, we still have many descriptive terms to illustrate the style and form of different types of carbonated beverage bottles. As we get more involved in the study of these forms and types, we become more descriptive in our terminology. Here are a few examples of the actual embossing on various specimens regarding their contents:

Soda Water
Mineral Water
Medicated Waters
Aerated Waters
Chalybeate Waters
Porter
Root Porter
Root Beer
Ale
Mead
Champagne Mead
Neplusultra
Lemon & Sarsaparilla Water
Nectarian

And the list goes on. So the catch all term "soda" has come to represent natural and artificially carbonated waters, as well as a variety of alcoholic beverages whose carbonation results from fermentation. Not to get too scientific here, but the general purpose of the "soda" bottle was to preserve carbonation and withstand the scalding hot waters used to sanitize returned bottles in preparation for re-use. Therefore, the two common characteristics among these styles and forms are the heavier, thick-walled glass (to prevent breakage) and large, heavy tops to hold the cork in firmly with thick, bail-wire enclosures.

The development of these closures relates to a fairly in-depth discussion of the evolution of the tapered, and then "blob" top. Many learned collectors and historians believe that strong twine was used to tie cork, prior to the acceptance of bail wire closures as a standard. This would lend credence to the idea that the blob top with it's rounded bottom would not be subject to the heavy wire scraping and eventual cracking of the bottom edge of the earlier tapered tops. As soda forms evolved, the blob top and heavier glass became more prominent, as the transition from open to iron pontil, and then snap case progressed.

These developments accompanied the development of various "forms" or body shapes and styles, allowing manufacturers to identify different "forms" with different products. Among other things, this would help a bottler or merchant (as well as their patrons) to distinguish their "soda" from their "porter" output, for example. Thus, we have come to identify the following forms, styles and descriptive terms among pre-civil war "sodas".

Early Soda
Blob Top Soda
Porter
Early Lager
Lager
Sided Soda
Over-sized Sided Soda
Mug-based Soda
Pony
Tee Pee
Ten Pin
Round Bottom
Scalloped Shoulder Soda
Drug Store

And, of course, there are more descriptive variations of these. As you can see, with all this variety of form, shape and style, it is no wonder that many of us just use the catch all term "soda". And in some cases, I may use the term myself throughout this document generically, if not precisely.

Empontiling . . .

The use of the pontil rod during the manufacturing process is characteristic of the pre-civil war era. Once the molten glass was gathered and formed by the blower, it was blown into a mold, removed, and then sheared from the blowpipe so that the top could be applied. The pontil rod was affixed to the base of the unfinished bottle in order to hold it steady during the shearing process and application of the top. After the top was applied the bottle would be "snapped" off the rod, leaving a distinctive mark, or "scar".

Pontil rods were either solid bare iron, or hollow (a blow pipe). The type of mark left depended upon which was used. It is generally considered that the use of a bare iron pontil rod was an improvement over the use of a spare blowpipe, since it would be more efficient to keep all hollow rods in use for blowing and use cheaper solid rods for pontiling. It is also obvious that the use of bare iron rods eliminated the extra step of dipping the rod in molten glass first, while still allowing a good "grip" on the unfinished bottle. When a blowpipe was used, it was first dipped in molten glass so that it would adhere to the base of the bottle. When the bottle was broken away from the rod, a circular glass ring or "open pontil" would be made. When a solid rod was first dipped in glass, it would leave a "scar" type pontil of jagged glass. When a heated bare iron rod was applied to the bottom, iron oxides fused into the hot glass, leaving what is often called an iron pontil mark. So the evolution of pontiling in the soda industry began with the open pontil and scar pontil and then the bare iron pontil. Each method was slightly more efficient than the prior. After the civil war, the advent of the snap case saw the relative extinction of pontiling in the bottle manufacturing industry. A snap case is a sort of cradle / tong apparatus that served the same function as a pontil rod, but with less stress to the glass upon removal. It may also have been easier to use. So the snap case, another improvement in the manufacturing process, left no mark on the base of the bottle. These bottles are aptly termed "smooth based". Another device, known as a "clamp" had been used for many years prior to the advent of the snap case to produce smooth-based round bottom or "egg" shaped minerals in both Europe and the U.S. But it was thought to be a cumbersome device that slowed down production.

In the competitive and secretive world of the early glass manufacturing industry in America there were many generalities and no absolutes. It is generally thought that during the Reconstruction period following the devastation of the civil war most glasshouses quickly adopted the snap case method. Just the same, there are certainly smooth base examples that pre-date the war and pontiled examples that post date the Reconstruction.

Thus, understanding and recognizing pontiling methods and the resultant marks is important in determining the age and rarity of the bottle. The soda industry really began its rise to prominence in America in the mid to late 1830's as cities like New York and Philadelphia began to grow, gave rise to industry, and interstate commerce began to take place. Back then, America did not have the advanced sewage and sanitation methods that we take for granted today, so a person who was born in New York City and lived there most of his life could travel to Savannah, Georgia, drink the local tap water there, and stand a very good chance of dying from dysentery. The soda water and mineral water industry proliferated as a result. These waters were relatively pure and free from the bacteria that city dwellers were accustomed to in their home town, but deadly to visitors. This was a big selling feature that bottlers capitalized on. Naturally, the upper class favored such waters in their own locale for obvious reasons.

So the soda industry began its prominence at just about the close of the "open pontil" era. By the time that soda and mineral waters were seeing widespread demand and popularity, the bare iron pontil was in widespread use. In fact, as necessity is the mother of invention, I believe that the demand for the product may have inspired the development of the more efficient iron pontil method. The point here is that open or scar pontil sodas are very rare and valuable due to their limited production period of, say, 1837 to 1844. Sodas manufactured during this period were thinner walled than later examples and often have a distinctive "short tapered top" as well. It was quickly learned that thicker glass was needed to prevent breakage, and heavier tops were needed to support closures that would preserve carbonation.

The big upsurge in soda production was 1845 to 1860--the iron pontil era, and the golden age of sodas. Though iron pontiled sodas are not as prized as their open pontiled predecessors, they certainly outrank their smooth based antecedents, which were mass produced by comparison through the use of even more efficient manufacturing methods--to keep up with the growing American population.