DESIGNER SODA BOTTLES
1930s
Digger Odell Publications ©2004
Wow, I'll bet you never knew there were so many different soda
bottle designs. On these next pages are hundreds of soda bottle designs and
still more images coming. In the 1930's technology again cause great
disruption in the beverage industry. A process of applying colored label which
were actually fused to the glass and did not wash off revolutionized the bottle
making industry. the new process required flat undecorated space for the
application of the colored label. Factories which had been highly
successful decades earlier in beating the competition like the Graham Glass,
American Bottle Company and Owens were now faced with innovative newcomers.
| The best known of these was the Glenshaw Glass Company who
began making the applied color label bottles about 1935. They did
not register any patents however until 1938. Notice the 1938 bottle
at the right has a large flat area for the ACL. The embossed design
is subdued compared with the earlier designs. The ACL process was
slower and few bottles could be produced in a comparable time. It would
take more than a decade before this and other technical problems were
solved. Two and three colored labels were the most labor
intensive and expensive and hence today are rarer. Most Glenshaw bottles
are marked with a G on the base and a unique dating code both on the base
and on the neck. |
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