Yellow Olive Green Umbrella Ink Bottle

Description

Form & Shape This is a classic eight-sided “Umbrella” ink bottle, so named for its octagonal pyramidal body that tapers from a wide, stable base to a narrow cylindrical neck. The form was designed to be bottom-heavy to prevent tipping and ink spills during use. The eight panels are well-defined, rising to a distinct shoulder that transitions into the neck.

Color & Glass Character The bottle is blown in a vibrant Yellow Olive Green. While many umbrella inks appear as “black glass” (a very deep, opaque olive amber), this specimen possesses a high degree of translucency. When backlit, it reveals a luminous, mossy yellow-green hue. The glass is filled with “seeds” (tiny, pinpoint air bubbles) and exhibits a characteristic “whittled” or wavy texture—a result of the hot glass coming into contact with a cooler metal mold.

Neck, Lip & Base

• Finish: The neck is topped with a hand-tooled rolled lip (sometimes called a folded lip), designed to accommodate a cork.
• Base: The underside features a crude, open pontil mark. This jagged ring of glass indicates the bottle was held by a glass-tipped pontil rod while the lip was being finished, a technique that largely disappeared after the introduction of the snap-case in the late 1850s.

Dimensions & Condition

• Height: 2 ⅜ inches
• Base Width: 2 ⅛ inches
• Condition Note: The bottle features two open surface bubbles, which are manufacturing “flaws” common in 19th-century utility glass. To collectors, these are often seen as desirable evidence of the crude, hand-blown manufacturing process of the era.

Origin & History

Where was this made? This bottle is definitively American and is attributed to the New England region. Given the specific yellow-olive color and the clarity of the glass, it was most likely produced at one of the following glass houses:

1. Stoddard, New Hampshire: The glass houses in Stoddard (such as the Granite Glass Company or New Weeks & Gilson) are the most famous for this particular “yellow-olive” and “olive-amber” glass. Their glass is legendary for its brilliant, bubbly quality and distinct color palette.
2. Keene, New Hampshire: The Marlboro Street Glassworks in Keene produced vast quantities of these umbrella inks in various shades of green and amber during the 1840s.
3. Connecticut Houses: Factories in Coventry or Willington, CT, also produced eight-sided inks, though their output often leaned toward a darker, “blacker” olive-amber.

Because these utility bottles were almost never marked with a maker’s name, they are generally categorized as “New England Glass,” with a strong leaning toward a Stoddard attribution for specimens with this exceptional color.