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Milk Bottle Neck & Lip Styles
Milk bottles can be found with or without neck embossing. The necks of milk bottles were embossed to make it easier to grasp the bottle as well as to aid in creameries identifying their bottles. The five pint bottles pictured above represent different neck embossing. The first bottle has up side down arrows, the second has fluted panels on the neck, the third has 3 rings (we have seen as few as one and as many as six rings), the fourth has short vertical lines (the most common neck embossing) and the last milk bottle has raised dots. We have also seen milk bottles with zig zag lines, diamonds, spiral lines, the dairy's initials and slogans such as "It Whips" embossed on the bottle's neck. The Cherry-Burrell Company offered nine neck markings for milk bottles made by the Thatcher Manufacturing Company in their 1939 catalog. The Creamery Package Manufacturing Company also offered nine neck markings in their 1940 catalog however they recommended against their use since the glass used in forming the neck embossing could be redistributed elsewhere to further strengthen the milk bottle.
Milk bottles left to right:
Santa Clara Valley Creamery, pint, Palo Alto, California, Illinois Pacific Glass, pre-1930
Swiss Dairy, pint, Susanville, California, Owens-Illinois, 1936
Turlock Milk Company, pint, Turlock, California, Illinois Pacific Glass Co., 1921
Haussler's Dairy, pint, Davis, California, Illinois Pacific Glass Co., 1922
Monterey Bay Milk Distributors, pint, Monterey, California, Owens-Illinois, 1942 
One neck embossing that was patented was the Dripless milk bottle, which is pictured above. Due to the wide lip on a milk bottle they were prone to drips running down the side of the bottle. On October 3, 1933, Carl Swanson of Minneapolis, Minnesota patented a design for an antidrip milk bottle. His bottle had a series of indents around the neck, similar to a honeycomb. The idea was that this would stop the drip from moving downwards and increase the surface area so it would dry. Unfortunately this design was hard to clean, weakened the glass in the neck area of the milk bottle and was difficult to remove from the mold during manufacture. Swanson was granted a second patent on August 27, 1935 that addressed these issues. This bottle had a pattern of embossing on the neck that looked like brickwork. The lines, however, were above the surface of the glass so the neck was not weakened. This design was easier to clean and also inhibited the downward movement of drips. The horizontal lines tended to spread out the drip letting it dry faster. These bottles are embossed patented but have no patent date or number. Under the brickwork pattern they were embossed DRIPLESS in a V shape. We have seen these bottles embossed or pyroglazed and in sizes of half pint, pint and quart. Many of these milk bottles were made by the Lamb Glass Company of Mount Vernon, Ohio and the bottles will have their L52 mark.
Milk bottle:
Oak Park Dairy, half pint, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Lamb Glass Co., late 1930's
Guernsey Dairy, quart, Benton Harbor, Michigan, Lamb Glass Co., late 1930's 
Probably the most distinctive feature of a milk bottle is the use of a milk cap to seal the bottle. However early milk bottles used glass or tin lids, often with a packing material between the glass bottle and the lid, to seal the bottle. Since milk bottles were to be returned and refilled, the ease of cleaning and sanitizing the bottle was a major consideration. A major drawback of bail type milk bottles with glass or metal lids however was the difficulty in cleaning the bottle, the lid and the bail that held them on. Metal parts were prone to corrosion and if the lid was not attached to the bail it was often lost. Thatcher advertisements for the cap seat or common sense milk bottle from 1893 also claimed that customers were more apt to keep bail top milk bottles rather than returning them since they had a reusable cap and could easily be converted to domestic use.
On September 17, 1889 Harvey and Samuel Barnhart of Potsdam, New York were issued a patent for a system of sealing milk bottles with a ligneous disk. Their preferred material was a white soft wood immersed in boiling paraffine although they also said wood pulp, fiber, paperboard or paper mache' could be used. In order to receive the milk cap, the milk bottle had to be finished with a shoulder or cap seat in the milk bottle lip for the cap to seal against. Although the patent was not officially assigned to the Thatcher Manufacturing Company, the Barnhart brothers were officers in the company and Thatcher was the first to use this new system of sealing milk bottles. They referred to it as the Common Sense Milk bottle. It would eventually become the standard for the milk bottle industry.
Pictured above are two milk bottles. On the left is a milk bottle with no cap seat and on the right is a bottle with a cap seat and also bottom embossed with the Sept. 17th, 1889 patent date. Note the ledge or shoulder for the milk cap to seal on but also notice that both bottles are fitted with metal bail style lids. At first glance this would seem wrong but finding milk bottles with bail tops and a cap seat is not all that uncommon. It appears bottle manufacturers quickly designed their milk bottles with cap seats yet some customers preferred the older style bail tops and others used the pulp caps in combination with the tin tops. In fact Harvey and Samuel Barnhart were issued patents on June 2 and July 28, 1896 for bail type bottle closures a full seven years after they introduced the milk cap. In both sets of patent papers they mention that these bail tops were especially desirable for use with the milk caps described in their September 17, 1889 patent. A paper published in 1907 by C. C. Johnson concerning the nation's milk supply estimated that 60% of milk bottles in use at that time were equipped with a tin cap as well as a paper cap. Bail tops were available well into the early 1900's before they were completely replaced by milk caps. We have seen advertisements as late as 1912 offering tin top milk bottles.
Sears, Roebuck and Company sold the Common Sense Milk Jar that used a milk cap in their 1897 catalog and Montgomery Wards advertised it as early as 1895. Both companies sold quart and pint size bottles. Sears price for quarts was $1.25/dozen or $13.50/gross while Wards had them priced at $1.50/dozen or $16.00/gross. Both companies used the same prepared ad and it mentioned that large dealers and milk depots could stamp the date or other information on the cap to allow them to trace back cases of unsatisfactory milk. This was the start of personalized milk caps. The milk bottles that Sears and Wards sold were similar in shape to the Thatcher Milk Protector bottle that used the 1886 patented glass lid. They were embossed on the front with a cow and ABSOLUTELY PURE BOTTLED MILK where as the 1886 bottle with the glass lid was embossed with a cow and a man milking it and ABSOLUTELY PURE MILK above and THE MILK PROTECTOR below. Both bottles were embossed TO BE USED ONLY AS DESIGNATED MILK & CREAM JAR in a slug plate on the back of the jar. The common sense bottle with the cap seat will be embossed PAT. SEP. 17, 89 where as the older milk protector jar will have no patent date on the jar since it was the glass lid that was patented and not the milk jar. The base embossing on the common sense milk jar was THATCHER MFG CO POTSDAM NY similar to the embossing found on some of the earlier milk protector jars. Click here to see a picture with the older Thatcher milk protector jar that used a glass lid on the left and the Thatcher common sense milk jar that used a paper cap on the right.
One will also find milk bottles that are embossed COMMON SENSE MILK JAR. These will be shaped more like typical milk bottles and we believe would date later than the milk bottles with the cow on the front and the 1889 patent date.
Click here to go to the page with bail top milk bottles and the Thatcher Milk Protector Jar.
Milk bottles left to right:
Thomas Gibson, quart, White Plains, New York, Fidelity
Unmarked, quart, Thatcher Manufacturing Company
The milk bottles pictured above have crown style lips. They were made to engage a metal cap with a cork or paper lining. This method of fastening the cap was much more common on beer and soda bottles but some milk bottles do exist. One advantage of this system was that the lip of the milk bottle was covered and thus it was claimed to be a more sanitary cover than a milk cap seated in a cap seat with the bottle lip exposed. The milk bottle on the left is a quart bottle that is embossed on the back: FOR MILK PASTEURIZED IN THE BOTTLE ONLY. A 1913 ad from The Crown Cork and Seal Company of Baltimore, Maryland, which owned the rights to the Dacro Crown cap, promoted the fact that milk in bottles sealed with these caps could be pasteurized in the bottle. This is how beer is pasteurized today. The advantage of this was the milk did not have to be handled after pasteurization and the chance for recontamination was eliminated. Milk in bottles with cardboard milk caps in a cap seat could not be pasteurized in the bottle.
The crown cap was patented by William Painter of Baltimore, Maryland. Painter had patented a successful bottle closure on September 29, 1885 called the bottle seal, loop seal or sometimes called the Baltimore loop seal. He was granted many patents for improvements of this closure, a tool for forming the special bottle finish and a tool for removing the closure. He was the general manager of the Bottle Seal Company which was assigned many of these patents and sold the loop seal. On February 2, 1892 Painter was granted three patents dealing with the crown style closures shown here. He formed the Crown Cork and Seal Company to market this new closure. On April 26, 1892 he patented a machine for installing crown caps and on February 6, 1894 he patented a crown cap bottle opener. He was granted many more patents for improvements in the crown cap, equipment to make and install them and gluten compounds to use as a seal inside the metal cap. Advertisements for the company as early as 1911 referred to the crown cap used on milk bottles as the Dacro Crown. The company remained in business for many years.
The crown top milk bottle was not used in great numbers however. Initially there were problems with the cork lining inside the metal cap imparting a flavor to the milk during pasteurization. This was solved by switching to wood or paper linings. The crown caps were slower to cap than conventional milk bottles and required a specialized capper. The cost of a small hand capper was 20 dollars in 1914 and rose to 25 dollars soon after but even this was a large expense for a small dairy. Chipping of the glass bottle lip was also mentioned as a drawback. Milk delivery men did not like the crown caps for one of the very reasons they were recommended. With the crown cap they could not tamper with the cap without it being obvious to the consumer. This prevented milk delivery men from opening quart bottles and splitting them in to pints while on their route (or combining pints into quarts) since the crown cap could not be replaced in the field like the paper disc cap could.
Crown caps were more popular with soda works and breweries because carbonated beverages required a tight seal like the crown cap supplied. With milk however the paper milk cap was sufficient. Also the cost of the capping machines was probably easier for a larger brewery to justify than a small creamery.
The quart milk bottle shown above on the left is turning a purple color due to manganese used to bleach the glass when it was made. The bottle in the middle above is a Borden's bottle shaped like a soda bottle. We are not sure what this bottle was originally designed to hold. The milk bottle on the right is pictured with its original crown cap. It is labeled CERTIFIED CREAM - CERTIFIED BY SANTA CRUZ COUNTY MEDICAL COMMISSION. Certified dairies were held to stricter standards and more frequent inspections than regular dairies. Many medical commissions recommended the use of the crown top milk bottles since they were more sanitary.
Pasteurization is named after Louis Pasteur who conducted experiments in the 1860's that showed heating wine could stop unfavorable fermentation. Some dairies started pasteurizing their milk in the 1890's but it wasn't till 1908 that Chicago became the first city to require milk to be pasteurized if it did not come from cows that were tested negative for tuberculosis. Other cities soon followed, with New York and Philadelphia requiring milk to be pasteurized by 1914.
There are various methods of pasteurization. In the early 1900's a batch method was used where a tank of milk was held at 145 degrees for 30 minutes. Pasteurization did not sterilize the milk and it still needed to be refrigerated afterward. It did greatly reduce the number of bacteria in the milk so the chance of bacterial illness was minimized and the shelf life of the milk was increased. Now days a HTST (High Temperature - Short Time) method is used in large creameries where the milk is heated to 161 degrees for 15 seconds. There is also a UHT (Ultra High Temperature) method where the milk is heated well above boiling under pressure for just a few seconds. This product is essentially sterile and does not have to be refrigerated until it is opened. This is used with coffee creamers in this country and is common in Europe on most milk products. Pasteurization is not without its downside. Some vitamins, enzymes and nutrients are destroyed by the heating process and the UHT process can create a cooked flavor. However this trade off is minor compared to the benefits.
Pasteurization should not be confused with homogenization. Homogenization is the breaking up of the fat globules in milk so it will not separate from the skim milk.
Milk bottles left to right:
Kell's Dairy, quart, Stockton, California, Thatcher Manufacturing Co., 1916
Borden's, 8 ounce, no location, Thatcher Manufacturing Co., 1920's
Linwood Farm Dairy, half pint, Santa Cruz, California, Thatcher Manufacturing Co., 1915 
The milk bottle on the left above is an example of a newer Dacro style lip. The Dacro Crown was the trademark used by the Crown Cork and Seal Company for their crown top milk bottle seal (pictured elsewhere on this page) and was designed to be more sanitary by covering the pouring lip on the milk bottle. It also was more sanitary than conventional milk caps since any milk seepage could not sit on top of the cap and possibly reenter the bottle. Originally the Dacro cap was tin with a paper lining but for this style bottle the cap was changed to aluminum foil with a paper lining.
The patent for this bottle was granted on January 19, 1932 as a design patent to Frank L. Lloyd of Baltimore, Maryland and was assigned to the Crown Cork & Seal Company of the same city. It is interesting that this was considered only ornamental and granted a design patent. It would seem that the Dacro bottle would be considered functional since the lip was integral to the capping of the bottle. These bottles were usually embossed Dacro and have the patent number. These milk bottles have no cap seat since the cap on these bottles engaged the outside of the bottle lip.
If you look closely at the bottle above on the left you will notice two glass lugs below the sealing lip. These were not actually shown in the 1932 patent but were shown in a patent issued to Stanley Dennis on August 1, 1939. This patent was also assigned to the Crown Cork and Seal Company. It was also a design patent so no functional details were discussed. However we have seen a pyroglazed bottle that mentioned these new lugs and indicated that they could be used for leverage to remove the cap. This same bottle also shows that the Dacro cap is now re-sealable which would not have been true of the original crown top cap (picture). This milk bottle however is embossed with the patent number of the 1932 patent and not the 1939 patent.
The milk bottle on the right is marked with a patent date of March 17, 1931. This patent was issued to John E. Sharp of New Kensington, Pennsylvania and Raymond W. Niver of Elmira, New York and was assigned to the Aluminum Company of America. This milk bottle lip was designed to work with an aluminum foil cap. The goals stated in the patent were to provide a cap which covered and protected the lip, which could be easily be reapplied and which could readily identify if the cap had been tampered with. The projections on the lip were intended to engage with the foil cap and keep it in place. There was a pattern of a long then a short projection going around the bottle lip. This bottle has 8 pairs of projections but we have seen some bottles with 10 pairs. This style lip is found on many Meadow Gold and Golden State milk bottles from California. These bottles are often embossed with the patent date. We have seen these milk bottles with and without a conventional cap seat.
Milk bottles left to right:
Piers Dairy, quart, Palo Alto, California, Owens-Illinois, 1945
The Fairmont Creamery Co., quart, location unknown, Thatcher Manufacturing Company, 1941
Off page milk bottle:
Jackson/Calaveras Creamery & Ice Co., quart, Jackson & Angels Camp, California, Owens-Illinois, 1941 
The bottle on the left is marked with a patent date of November 22, 1927. This patent was issued to Edward F. Glacken of Brooklyn, New York for a milk bottle with gripping projections under the bottle lip. The pouring surface of the bottle was still smooth but under the lip were raised ridges in the glass. The bottle pictured here has 32 ridges. In his patent Glacken stated that milk bottles were often dropped and broken because in the early morning hours the milk bottle would slip out of the milkman's hands. These ridges improved his grip on the bottle and also would aid him in identifying his bottles by feel in the dark morning hours when milk was delivered.
In 1929 the Atlantic Bottle Company advertised a Hold Fast Grip Milk Bottle that referenced this patent. Interestingly they often advertised that this lip made it easier for children to handle the bottle. Atlantic Bottle Company must have controlled this patent at that time because the advertisement said that they would prosecute patent infringements. They threatened to prosecute manufacturers, purchasers and users of these bottles. Some bottle manufacturer must have been infringing on the patent at the time. Owens-Illinois acquired this patent when they bought Atlantic Bottle Company in 1930. These bottles often have the patent number and patent date embossed on them. These milk bottles will have a cap seat since this embossing was not involved with sealing the bottle. Besides the patent for the Cream Top milk bottle this is the most common patent date one finds embossed on milk bottles.
The bottle on the right is an example of the milk bottle lip described in the April 6, 1937 patent issued to James E. Greenwood of Sapulpa, Oklahoma and assigned to Liberty Glass Company, also in Sapulpa. This patent is a combination of the ideas behind the 1927 patent that dealt with providing a better grip on the milk bottle and the 1931 patent that dealt with engaging the foil milk cap. Greenwood states that his invention will provide the user with a better grip of the milk bottle to reduce breakage, allow a means of identifying bottles in the dark, be able to be formed readily in the usual bottle making machines and providing a gripping surface to securely engage and hold aluminum foil milk caps. The patent papers showed three different styles of this lip. One has just the horizontal ridges, one has horizontal and vertical ridges (this style is pictured above) and one has horizontal and slanting ridges (picture). There also were milk bottles embossed with this patent number that had a much shorter lip that was very similar to the Glacken lip (picture). It was interesting that Greenwood also mentioned that a source of milk bottle breakage was by children who were not strong enough to handle the bottles. We don't know if this milk bottle was any safer around children.
We have seen bottles manufactured in 1936 through 1938 with this lip that are embossed PATENT APPLIED FOR. Since this patent was assigned to Liberty Glass Company, many of these milk bottles will have their L-G mark on the bottles. However we have also found milk bottles made by Owens-Illinois Glass Company that used this style lip. All the bottles we have seen have had a cap seat.
Milk bottles left to right:
Arden Farms Co., quart, Los Angeles, California, Owens-Illinois 1946
West Coast Dairy, quart, Everett, Washington, Liberty Glass Company, 1945
Off page milk bottle
Winder Dairy, quart, Salt Lake City, Utah, Liberty Glass Company, 1939 
We had once seen a reference in a milk bottle catalog for a Sansby milk bottle. We were aware that a design patent was granted to Joseph Sansby of St. Paul, Minnesota on May 19, 1936 however we had never seen the bottle. This patent was for a double lip configuration but since it was a design patent very few details were revealed in the patent papers. Pictured on the left above is a milk bottle we recently found embossed HEALTH-TOP BOTTLE that was also embossed with this patent number. The bottle has no cap seat so the cap must have engaged on the outside of the bottle similar to a Dacro cap. It is interesting that the bottle embossing implies a health benefit yet the patent papers only claim a unique ornamental design and make no claims for sealing the bottle or its health benefits.
After further research we came across a second patent granted to Joseph Sansby on August 3, 1937 for another double-lipped milk bottle. This was a utility patent so the patent papers describe more detail. It does appear that his idea concerned a health benefit. Our research indicates that Joseph Sansby was a medical doctor which would explain his health concerns. His idea for a double lip was two-fold. First it would stop milk from dripping down the side of the bottle during pouring and second it would keep ones hand from touching the upper pouring lip when grabbing the bottle. He was attempting to isolate the part of the bottle that was touched by the hand and the parts of the bottle that would be contacted by the milk. Interestingly this second patent was actually applied for on July 1, 1935, prior to the design patent granted in 1936 for the bottle pictured above. Sansby obviously had these health benefits in mind and applied for a design patent on a similar milk bottle while his utility patent was pending. It just happened that the design patent was granted before the utility patent.
We have only seen this patent on milk bottles from Oak Grove Dairy but we have seen versions manufactured by Thatcher Manufacturing Company as well as Owens-Illinois.
Pictured on the right is a milk bottle that has embossing on the bottle lip. These bottles first appeared in the early 1940's and we know of three companies that offered embossing on the bottle lips. The bottle pictured above has the slogan A BETTER BOTTLE OF MILK which was used by Lamb Glass Company. Thatcher Manufacturing Company used the slogan A BOTTLE OF MILK IS A BOTTLE OF HEALTH while Owens-Illinois Glass Company used the saying MILK FOR HEALTH IN A BOTTLE FOR SAFETY. These sayings probably had some advertising benefit in allowing the consumer to recognize a dairy's milk bottle as well as being some benefit to the milkman in identifying his bottles similar to the Glacken patent mentioned above.
Milk bottle:
Oak Grove Dairy, quart, location unknown, Owens-Illinois, 1940
Woodworth Dairy Farms, half pint, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Lamb Glass Co., date unknown 
The milk bottles above were made by Cleveland Container and were patented by George Cleveland of Fairmount, Indiana on March 1, 1910. These bottles have a cap seat for a normal milk cap but the lip has a pouring spout formed into it to make it easy to pour out the contents of the bottle. The patent papers describe a hinged cover that went with the bottle although the papers say the bottle could be used in modified form with a standard milk bottle cover such as these bottle have. The bottles pictured here are a pint and a quart size. The front of the milk bottle is embossed CLEVELAND CONTAINER PAT'D 1910 on the pint and the quart is embossed CLEVELAND CONTAINER PAT'D MAR. 1-1910. The backside of the bottle, under the pouring lip, is embossed with the size. The pint bottle, above, is turned to show the pouring spout. Click here to see a close up of the lip of this milk bottle.
Milk bottle:Cleveland Container, pint, location and maker unknown, 1910-20Cleveland Container, quart, location and maker unknown, 1910-20 
Pictured above is a unique milk bottle lip with a notch in it. These milk bottles were manufactured by the Belle Pre Bottle Company of Alexandria, Virginia. Some of these bottles will be embossed with a November 12, 1899 patent date. This patent was issued to John Miller of Washington D.C. As described in the patent, the intent of the notch was to accept a special milk cap that had a lateral extension that would extend past the bottle lip through the notch and act as a handle. This would allow the cap to be easily removed without damage and then reinserted to seal the bottle as needed. The notch in the patent drawings had a flat bottom to accept this extension of the cap rather than the curved notch shown in the picture. We have never seen this special milk cap. Also Belle Pre Bottle Company advertisements for their bottle did not show a cap with an extension either. The advertisements showed a conventional milk cap being removed by a finger with the notch shaped just like the one in the picture above. Somewhere along the line the company must have deviated from the patent design. We would suspect that the extension of the cap extending outside the lip could have been a problem. Handling of the milk bottles could have easily dislodged the cap. Also we suspect that leakage would have been an issue if the notch in the lip was cut down to the level of the cap seat for any distance.
John Miller was actually granted a design patent in March of 1899 for a milk bottle with a cut down lip that preceded the November patent. That patent did not show a cap and since it was a design patent no claims were made as to the purpose of function of the bottle.
The Belle Pre Bottle Company was started in late 1902 and we have found advertisements for these notched milk bottles as early as December of 1904. In November of 1905 they took out large ads trying to sell these notched milk bottles (picture). They also advertised that they were the largest milk bottle factory in the world with an output of 2 rail car loads each day. Unfortunately the company was not successful and filed for bankruptcy in October of 1912. These notched milk bottles are very seldom seen. Based on their rarity it is unlikely that the Belle Pre Bottle Company produced as many milk bottles as they claimed.
Picture of bottle lip courtesy of The Potomac Pontil, June 2003 |
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