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1894 Murdoch & Freeman Portland Maine Aqua Blobtop Bottle
Outstanding 1894 Murdoch & Freeman, Portland, Maine large aqua soda/beverage bottle with an applied blobtop and spectacular, deeply struck embossing.
The front is boldly embossed:
MURDOCH & FREEMAN
PORTLAND, ME.
1894
One of the best features of this bottle is that it is actually dated 1894 in the glass, eliminating the guesswork normally involved in dating an antique bottle.
This is a wonderfully crude, character-filled piece of late-19th-century glass. The aqua glass contains numerous tiny seed bubbles and fine black, sand-grain-sized impurities/inclusions from the original glassmaking process. These are manufacturing characteristics rather than later damage and give the bottle terrific visual character.
The applied blobtop is excellent and displays the hand-finished construction expected of a bottle from this period. The enormous oval embossed panel is particularly impressive, with very strong, crisp, easy-to-read lettering.
Murdoch & Freeman were operating in Portland, Maine, during an important transitional period in American beverage bottling. This 1894 blobtop represents the traditional cork-closure era immediately before crown-cap bottles began rapidly changing the industry during the mid-1890s.
CONDITION
Excellent / near mint antique condition.
Bright, clean and shiny glass with no chips, no cracks, no haze and essentially no case wear. The embossing is exceptionally strong. Numerous tiny bubbles and fine black inclusions are original manufacturing characteristics of the glass.
A beautiful, display-worthy 132-year-old Maine bottle with superb color, condition, embossing and an unusually desirable 1894 date molded directly into the glass.
An excellent addition to a collection of Maine bottles, Portland advertising, antique soda bottles, blobtops, brewery/beverage bottles or 19th-century American glass. And its a rarer quart size!
