Manufacturer: Brookmead Guernsey Dairies
Fun find out of a home but with condition issues as will be detailed below. This is a vintage glass dairy bottle or milk bottle in the tall quart size. Used by and marked for Brookmead Guernsey Dairies of Wayne, PA, which is in Tredyffrin Township in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
Tall clear glass round milk bottle with light orange embossing. Measures about 9 1/2 inches in height. Bottle has a smaller top opening, then a long slender neck which opens to a bulbous base. Measures about 2 1/8 inches diameter for the full top, and about 1 5/8 inches for the top opening diameter. This is the type of bottle which would take a flat, inset, paperboard milk bottle cap piece (and has a molded slight/thin inner glass rim inset from the top, we do not have the cap). It has very thick glass rimming the top opening (about 5/16 inch in width/glass thickness here), with a molded diamond hatch design under the top rim. Greatest width to the bottle is about 3 5/8 inches. This old bottle is heavy, weighing 22.3 ounces unpacked.
On one side is embossed the words "Brookmead Guernsey Dairies, Wayne, PA." On the opposite side is embossed "Please Return Bottles Daily". In raised molded letters along the base on the Brookmead side it reads "One Quart Liquid". On the other side of the bottle in raised molded letters along the base it states "Sealed BB48 Registered". On the underside base in raised glass molding is a large central "B", with "Duraglas" to one side and on the other side, the numbers "17" and "46" with a symbol inbetween. There is also a small circle at the center of the "B".
This is definitely a vintage piece from the style, markings and wear. We believe it likely dates to the 1940's or earlier. From some internet research, Brookmead originally was a 156 acre dairy farm in this area along Route 363. This land had begun development for suburban housing by the mid 1950's, so we believe that the mid 1950's would be the latest time frame for this older milk bottle. You can see a number of tiny bubbles in the glass as made which are also indicative of age, as well as some manufactured striations, pin/pit dotting, etc. in the glass.
This was very difficult to photograph to show condition and coloring well. In person, the orange embossing is a faded light orange color, but it is not even throughout, with the orange color on the Brookmead side darker on the right letters/words than on the left ones. The reverse is true on the opposite side, with several left letters darker than those on the right...but all embossing looks faded although still readable. You can see some of this in the images, although some images make all of this appear darker than you will see in person.
We shot images with the camera lighting (which causes white "hot spot" reflections on the smooth glass) and without the camera light while holding the bottle up to a glass door for a natural lighting source (this makes the orange embossing seem darker but easier to read). There are 8 images including close-ups, so please look across all of these to get the best idea, and use the zoom feature for best detail.
Beyond the faded orange embossing noted above, you can see in the images that a number of the embossed letters have surface wear/embossed flaking, although still fully readable. Importantly, in the last image we tried to show that there is a hole in this bottle, near the base, to the lower right of the Wayne, PA lettering. This has a defined, slightly over 1/16 inch hole width opening with circular glass cracking/lines surrounding this and some diagonal crack lines radiating outward from this....net, this bottle can not be used to hold water as a vase in its current condition (you could plug this to do so, but we are selling as is/as found). There is also a lot of white skimming/spotting/discoloration on the interior of the bottle which we tried to show in some images (this was hard to photograph). There are no other cracks or chips, but usual evidence of age/wear/use on this bottle via scratches, surface wear, scars, dot/dirt dot spots, etc., as to be expected. If one were to fill this with white styrofoam as many folks do, you might not see this bottle wear we don't know, but we show items without that to better show the true condition. |
