Ringed Beehive Teakettle Ink Bottle

Description

• Form & Mold: Mold-blown “teakettle” fountain ink bottle featuring a classic tiered beehive (or bee skep) dome with continuous, rounded horizontal concentric rings. The offset angled spout served to maintain a constant ink level at the dip opening while shielding the main reservoir from air exposure.
• Color & Glass Character: Light aqua-green / sea-green bottle glass heavily populated with seed bubbles, elongated air inclusions, and slight slag/carbon specks typical of mid-19th-century utilitarian batch glass.
• Base & Seams: Smooth, slightly indented base showing vertical mold seam lines extending along the spout and body, indicating manufacture in a two-part hinged mold.

Manufacturing Context & Additional Details

• Origin & Dating: English, circa 1860s–1880s. While American and Continental glassworks commonly ground the mouths or added threaded brass/metal collars to teakettle inks, British glassmakers frequently produced economy “penny ink” variants blown with a simple burst/sheared lip.
• Lip Finish: The jagged, unfinished spout top is a quintessential burst lip (also referred to as a blow-over or sheared finish). The bottle was snapped off directly at the blowpipe without reheating, fire-polishing, or applying a tooled ring to minimize production costs.
• Original Closure: Sold strictly as commercial, disposable ink containers. The opening was plugged with a small, tapered cork driven flush and capped with red or black sealing wax, which the purchaser broke open with a penknife.
• Collector Classification: In reference catalogs such as Joe L. Mathews Jr.’s TeaKettle Ink Price and Reference Guide, banded and ribbed beehive variants fall under the JLM #M105 mold family and related British novelty patterns. Burst-lip examples in colored glass (greens, deep aquas, and amethysts) remain notably scarcer than standard smooth or octagonal inkwells due to the fragility of their unfinished spouts.