Antique Bottles
If you keep track of my photoblog you might have seen the macro of the antique bottle I posted the other day. I love glass bottles or most any size or shape, though I prefer ones with functional corks or lids that are relatively smooth. 
I am not exactly sure where this love for bottles began but my oldest memory of being fascinated with bottles goes back to when I was quite young. I remember looking at an old orange cream soda bottle and being utterly engrossed with the embossing on the glass and wondering how it was done.
At the moment I limit my bottles to the ones I really love and I only buy ones (in thrift stores) that I currently have a use for. The bottles in the photo above however, were given to me on Monday. An elderly woman in one of my friend’s families recently passed away and my friend somehow ended up with the bottles above. She gave them to me as she had no particular use for them and knew I would appreciate them. And I do, very much so! (Thank you Michelle!) The two rows of bottles on the left have no writing, the middle row only have embossed fluid ounce readings on them and the two right rows have heavy embossing, (the further right are actually old root beer syrup bottles.)
The one I am holding in the picture for the right is my favorite. I have been trying to imagine what might have originally been in it. Obviously they all held fluid at some point, dry ingredient bottles tend to have wider mouths. The glass on my favorite one is quite thick and smooth except for a vertical seam on opposite sides. The only marking on the bottle is “192″ embossed on the bottom.
The reason I like smooth bottles the most is because they are excellent to relabel or paint, I usually fill them with spices. These bottles have narrow enough necks that I don’t particularly want to fill them with spices, so I am not quite sure what their eventual use will be for. I may even up just putting small matching “things” in them (like sea glass) for display, though I like functionality above all. It might be neat to put some of my cooking extracts in hand painted antique bottles, a shame to hide them away in the baking cupboard then… A use will come to me though.
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Something I recently found out that I think is really neat is that I can get coupons from WIC between June and October that can only be used at local farmers markets. I think that is really cool!