Message #12584

[rpfstoneman]

All,
I spent about 45 minutes discussing and asking questions of Chris Randall (the dealer) in Portland on how various bottles are made from glass.  You have your bottles carved (actually ground) from blocks of glass, there are bottles made by means of the more traditional glass blowing techniques, and then there are bottles which are blown but done so into a mold.   Blown molded bottles tend to be more uniform and regular in shape then free hand blown bottles in the more traditional bottle forms.  Free hand blown bottles can have more variation in wall thickness and may not have a true or be complete balance in form upon close inspection.
 
Molded bottles can be simple in form or have designs that can also be quite intricate which can be detailed out by finish grinding and polishing.  Then you have the odd shaped hand bottle such as Giovanni’s post.  Based on my discussion with Chris I would say that this bottle was formed by blown it into a mold.

Charll