National Register of Historic Places Eligibility Testing of Sites 41LT172 and 41LT354 in Luminant's Kosse Mine, Limestone, Texas Page: 25
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4. Methods
finishing was no longer required with the advent of the Owens Automatic Bottle Machine in 1904,
although machine-made bottles did not become common until around 1915 (Lindsey 2011a).
Mold Seams: Mold seams are raised lines on the body, shoulder, neck, finish, and/or base of the
bottle that are formed where the edges of different mold sections meet (Lindsey 2011b). Seams
indicate manufacture within a mold form and are conclusive evidence that a bottle was not free-
blown. Mold seams prior to the automatic bottle machine do not extend beyond the neck of the
bottle to the rim. Therefore, mold seams provide broad temporal indications that a glass container
was manufactured after 1830, and when present on neck/rim fragments, they can date a container
to after 1904.
Suction Scars: Suction scars were produced by the first automatic bottle-making machine made by
the Toledo Glass Company in 1904. The process of filling a mold through the bottom and finishing
with a mechanical blade cutting off the feed left a distinctive rough circular scar on the base of the
bottle, referred to as Owens (after Michael Owens) suction scars (Lindsey 2011a). While suction
scars could have been created until the Owens machine fell out of use in 1982, they were usually a
result from an earlier Owens machine, narrowing the date range from 1904 through the 1920s
(Lindsey 2011a).
Bubbles: Bubbles are variably sized gas or air pockets in glass. By the twentieth century, the
introduction of arsenic or sodium nitrate into the glass production process eliminated impurities
such as bubbles (Kendrick 1963). Therefore, glass containing bubble inclusions usually has a
production date prior to 1920 (Polak 2000).
Finishing: Finishing is the last step in producing a mouth-blown bottle and requires the "finishing"
of the bottle rim where the blowpipe was removed. Varying techniques have been employed,
including hand-tooled and applied finishes. Tooling is the process of applying a lipping tool to the
rim of a vessel in order to produce the desired finish, which often produces obliteration of mold
seams near the rim and the "swirling" of the glass at the point of contact. Applied finishes involve an
extra application of glass to the rim in order to form the finish, and also employ the use of a lipping
tool in order to produce the desired rim form. Glass container rims exhibiting tooled and applied
finishes generally predate 1915 when fully machine-made bottles dominated commercial
production (Lindsey 2011c).
Color
Color is an important descriptive element; however, it provides limited temporal data due to
significantly broad popularity and production date ranges (Jones and Sullivan 1989). Glass colors
have no standard terminology; however, every glass shard's color was recorded using
nomenclature proposed by the Society of Historical Archaeology (Lindsey 2011d). Modifying
terminology, such as light or dark, was also employed to more precisely describe the color intensityor hue. Colors recorded were amber, aquamarine, colorless, solarized, light green, and opaline.
Private and Confidential
Atkins 100021558/110187 25
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Atkins North America, Inc. National Register of Historic Places Eligibility Testing of Sites 41LT172 and 41LT354 in Luminant's Kosse Mine, Limestone, Texas, report, February 2012; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth839205/m1/34/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.