Hi - welcome to the GMB.
My suggestion for a date on your bottle base would be that this is unlikely to be any earlier than c. 1720, which was around the time of the change from the earlier 'onion' shape to the more common straight sided shape which has remained more or less unchanged until now. I'm not suggesting your is from that date - it might, as Peter has suggested, be later and could even be C19.
If you look at the onion bottle shape, you'll see that the body was very bulbous, creating a curved profile that starts at the base and flares outward - not at all like the later bottles. In these earlier examples there is a noticeable gap - internally - between the kick and the curved side of the bottle - this is not apparent on yours, which suggests this one was made as a straight sided bottle, and thus not earlier than the date I've mentioned.
This would mean yours was certainly made after the demise of the Sussex/Surrey Wealden glass industry you mention, which, according to the books, appears to have died out around c.1620 - mostly it seems because Mansell was championing the government's outlawing of the use of wood as a fuel for the furnaces - he had an axe to grind since coal was, for him in London more easily available anyway. According to Kenyon, the Sussex/Surrey workers were decimating the forests at a rate of knots, and the wood cutters could barely keep up with the volume of wood required.
Plus - the mostly French emigrees who started this south of England industry were concerned mainly with window glass and smaller utility items and bottles - certainly not the thick walled large bottles such as yours.
As for the colour - the vast majority of glass for bottle making had always been some shade of dark green due to the iron impurities in the sand - this remnant looks almost brownish, but I suspect that might be caused by surface sickness and think I can see the green in some of the crevices.
regret I can't explain the circular almost 'post-formed' mark on what would have been the inside of the kick. Generally, kicks serve more than one purpose - and I wonder if in this instance it was just for strengthening the bottom of the bottle rather than hiding the pontil scar - I can't see any scar within the depression. Certainly the earlier onion bottles were made in two parts, and the kick hid the scar created when the worker attached the body to his pontil rod in order to fit the neck - but just not sure with the later straight sided bottles.
On the assumption that your piece of glass won't contain uranium
- you don't explain reasons for your suggestion of using a u.v. torch.
Might you be thinking of this providing some indication of the presence of either potash-lead glass or soda glass? Not my area at all, but would not have thought this piece would contain any lead, manganese or other decolourants - but then perhaps you had something else in mind.
Glass, if nothing else, travels.............. and when whole your bottle may have originated from somewhere very distant from Dorking - of course it might have come from Chateau Denbie
References: 'English and Irish Glass' - Geoffrey Wills
'The Glass Industry of the Weald' - G. H. Kenyon
'English Table Glass' - E. M. Elville
'Coloured Glass' - Derek C. Davis and Keith Middlemas
'The Encyclopedia of Glass' - Edited by Phoebe Phillips
Topic: Help identify this glass find in dorking Surrey england (Read 1601 times)
