Umbrella Ink – Embossed “BLAKE N.Y.”

1840’s-Era American “Umbrella-Ink” Bottle from Early New York City. The tapering-round, eight-sided ink bottle is crudely “Mold-Blown”.  This aquamarine-colored glass shimmers. Its unevenly expanded sides slightly vary in thickness.  The panels create shining waves of early “glass-texture”, “whittle-marks” and suspended air-bubbles of various shapes and sizes.

The front panels display crude, crooked and early-style embossed letter characters which read, vertically: “BLAKE – N.Y. The top of the bottle is a perfect “hand-tool-formed outwardly rolled lip-finish”. The bottom of the bottle is thick and concave with early glass-texture and has a disc-shaped “tubular open-pontil-scar” in the center of the base.

There was a New York City druggist who offered a line of patent medicines, including “Dr. Blake’s Aromatic Bitters / N.Y.”  He may have instigated this 1840’s-50’s era umbrella ink bottle. Thomas Blake, the druggist, had his business / store located at 118 Division Street  + 69 South Street, New York City in 1849.