Message #49070

[Rube]

Frank,

The last close up picture helps.  Look at the blue wear vs. red, and white.  Every layer is rougher than one would expect for "natural wear".   One could expect some wear on the highest blue layers, but the lower layers shouldn't be.  I think the faces you mention were actually worn away by some form of abrasion, the lines seem fairly uniform going side to side. Some clues to help date your bottles are the size, the shape and the colors used.  I'm trying to buy more books about snuff bottles so I can learn about them, and look at as many examples I can.  Pin is correct, the more examples you look at from collections of provenance, you can start to get a sense of correct sizes, shapes and colors of bottles fitting into certain time frames of their actual manufacture. 

Cheers,

Rube.