The origins of the bottle – that is the glass bottle – can be traced back to about 1500 b.C. In fact, if the first evidence of the art of glass-processing is a glass bead dating back to 3500 b.C., the most remote finds of hollow glass recipients (ancestors of the modern bottle), the age of which could be determined with certainty, come from the Pharaoh tombs, under the form of small bottles (balsam containers), small vases and goblets.

These objects were made using a technique called “on friable nucleus”, a laborious process that consisted of winding molten glass filaments around a bag filled with sand or wet clay. Balsam containers were mostly produced to hold ointments and cosmetics. These glass working systems continued until the 1st century b.C., when an event of great importance took place in Tiro and Sidone, which revolutionised glass working.

A glassmaker came up with the idea of using a glass tube, inserting the end in a crucible, taking a certain amount of molten glass, and blowing in the pipe. The glass bubble that formed in this way marked the birth of blown glass, which today is still made in the same way. Glass, which was initially used only for luxury objects, that was free blown or blown into moulds made it into a raw material suitable for the production of widely consumed objects. This is how bottles, carafes, flasks and vases of any form and size for any use came about.

With the use of the blowing technique, reduced production times, manufacturing ease, glass soon gained an important position compared to metal and clay objects that had been used till then. Syria, which in the second century, became the world’s glass producing centre, exporting its products everywhere. Rome, which at that time was imperial, immediately took advantage of applying the techniques, not only in Italy, but also in all the provinces of the Empire. There was an extensive production of bottles, as witnessed by Martial and Petronius. Confirmation of glass bottles used for pouring and preserving wine came from Pompeii, destroyed in 79.

The Speyer museum in Germany preserves a glass amphora from the II century, full of coagulated wine. The wine, which was sweetened with honey could not evaporate, thanks to the layer of oil used as an insulator. When the oil came into contact with air it hardened until it became a real resin, thus preventing the wine from evaporating. The production of oil, medicine and mostly wine bottles continued up to the V century.

The bottles are moulded into two forms: rectangular or square (travelling bottles) with a flat wide handle attached at right angles on one side, or a cylinder with one or two bent handles like the previous bottles, but narrower.

The history of glass from the VII to the IX century remains a little obscure, and particularly knowledge about hollow glass. With the end of the splendour of Roman glass that came to an end with the middle ages, glass artwork developed in Greece and Turkey, especially in Constantinople, where even the production of hollow glass is original, without however modifying the technique. But, in the meantime, the seafaring power of Venice was becoming increasingly important in Italy.

In 1204 the Crusaders conquered Constantinople and immediately the Venetian government took advantage of this to bring the most skilful Greek and Turkish master glassmakers to the city, thereby guaranteeing Venice the works and art of those master glassmakers. These glassmakers were called “Phiolìeri” because they blew vials, i.e. bottles (Les fiales de vin), as told by chronicler of the era Martino da Canale. This is how the “bucae” came about, i.e. wine and oil bottles, which had to bear a blue ring on the neck and a stamp by the Municipality of Venice. The glass measures and bottles were purchased by the Venetian Republic monopoly, and then sold on the Venetian trading markets, with a sound profit for the Venetian State.

No one could freely sell glass bottles, especially to other municipalities other than those of Venice without a licence granted by the “Giustizieri”.

The production of “Inghistere” was important in the Venetian Republic. These were recipients that for many centuries, and in many variants, would continue to be used to design round-bellied, long necked glass bottles, wine and water bottles. Another cradle in Italian glassmaking art of that era was Altare, the production and form being different from the Venetian production. But the glassmaking history of Altare, which was proud of its outstanding glassmaking masters, soon came to an end due to various events.

While in Italy, away from the Venetian Republic, hollow glass had not yet taken on much importance, in Europe this type of production was developing well. The countries with the greatest production and best hollow glass techniques were France, Belgium and Germany. Bottles maintained their spherical shape with a punt at the bottom and long neck.

The production was mainly for extravagance, with bottles sometimes placed on gold or silver frames. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, an improvement in bottle production could be noted. The bottles described up to now were not suitable for transportation and long-term preservation of beverages, especially wine. But it is during this period that bottles were used for serving. Slowly, the bottle leaves behind its spherical form, and the body becomes elongated and the neck smaller. But the most important technical glassmaking developments take place around the mid seventeenth century.

And it was during this period that lead crystal glass was produced in England and potassium crystal glass in Bohemia. This is when the real bottle that was suitable for preserving and transporting beverages was produced, in fact the real “wine bottle” by Sir Kenelm Digby who produced it in 1652, but did not worry about patenting it. It seems that it was patented in 1661 by a certain John Colnett who took all the merit for this memorable event, making history as regards the wine bottle.

This bottle was made in dark, strong, heavy glass. The body was ball-shaped, the bottom having a slight punt to give stability to the bottle. Around the neck, a few centimetres from the bottle mouth, a ring was applied to strengthen the neck and to hold the string that held and blocked the cork. In the following 30-40 years, the body became elongated and the neck became shorter to improve its stability. The bottles were then prepared with charcoal molten glass that made them very fragile. In 1615 King James I prohibited the use of wood and its associated charcoal in the glassworks, as the English forests were practically being destroyed, forcing the use of mineral coal. The bottle were then prepared by melting silica at higher temperatures to give greater sturdiness and resistance.

This considerably solved the problem of storage, preservation and transportation of wine. This bottle was called the “English bottle”. Given its advantages, it soon became popular through Europe. The bottles of that time were hand processed and it was not possible to control the capacity. Very often the bottles were customised with a glass stamp reproducing either the proprietors monogram or trade mark, or the vintage.

But we immediately ask ourselves: how come the bottle originated in England? The answer is easy. At that time, the English owned half the world. Among other things, they had many cellars in Porto, Portugal; Jerez de la Frontera in Spain; Marsala in Sicily. Moreover, they had interest in and traded with Bordeaux in France. They had distillates in the Caribbean, especially Gin and Rum as well as, of course, their own.

Therefore, the English were the inventors of the first glass wine bottle blown in wooden moulds. The new bottle revolutionised the wine trade, spreading throughout the European countries. Before this invention, bottles were never sold with their contents. They were used in the families and continuously washed and reused. From this moment onwards, the contents and the container were commercialised. The bottle spread first from England to France where the first glassworks were set up in the region of Champagne-Ardenne. Then, at the end of the eighteenth century it reached the Rhine area in Germany and Piedmont in Italy.

The bottle arrived in France just at a time when the initial trials were being made with the production of Champagne. For many years experiments with Dom Perignon caused breakages and explosions that at times reached 95 percent of all the bottles. Only much later, that is towards the first decades of the eighteenth century, were more robust bottles produced such as to resist the high pressure of Champagne. However, even in the eighteenth century a considerable number of bottles exploded, but it was with this wine that the true long-term preservation of wine was started.

Towards the middle of the eighteenth century bottles became very popular, as well as quality wine. As regards the bottle shape, we can confirm that the diameter of the bottom is gradually reduced and the height is increased, thereby shortening the neck, but making storage in the cellar far easier. During this period the French, together with Champagne, are first to produce the great Bordeaux and Bourgogne wines, using specific bottles. This development and differentiation in the bottle shape improved its quality with a constant distribution and thickness of the glass, a sturdy and safe closure, as well as an even colour. Towards 1775 Schloss Joannesberg, a great German vine dresser and cellarman, started bottling wines from the Rhine region, giving way to the typical Rhine Wine bottle.

The popular use of typical bottles beyond the Alps started in the eighteen century in Italy as well, which was invaded by the Bordeaux and Bourgogne wine bottles. Only around 1789-1790 was standardisation applied and Italy also produced typical and different shaped bottles. However, we must remember that in Italy too, the end of the seventeenth century marks the establishment of the glassworks in Poirino, near Turin, hence the name “Poirinetta”, one of the most beautiful forms of the Piedmont that are still used nowadays. This gave rise to the production of the “Piedmont Pre-Napoleonic Pint” and the “Normal Piedmont Pint”, the normal Piedmont litre that was blown by the artisans of the Acqui glassworks, and finally, the Champagne bottle.

Generally, these bottle, as well mentioned by Gibelli in his book, were the result of simple peasants, vine dressers, who earned an income to round-off their meagre earnings as farmers, from manufacturing bottles. As stated then:

• income from wine, scanty income;
• who boils to sell wine, does not even earn a quarter.

Another popular shape was the so-called “Albeisa”, which was manufactured by the Altare and Acqui glassworks.

During this period the production of glasses and bottles of various sizes took place in Italy and Europe: for ordinary and prestigious wines, for liquors and grappas. This is how an assortment of tableware with precise functions was started.

Passing over to the nineteenth century, glass production can be divided into two significant moments:

• artisan glasswork belonging to the first half of the nineteenth century:
• glass produced using semi-automatic or almost industrial processes in the second half of the nineteenth century.

The advent of industry reduces production costs and decreases artisan production in favour of mass production. Definite changes take place in glass working. It is fundamental to remember that there was almost a sudden leap from the hand-made product to mechanical production.

Technological progress brought value to the container that was just slightly below the value of the contents themselves. Technique improves rapidly with mechanisation: first with semi-automatic machines and then with fully automatic machines. The history of machines in glassworks can be divided into three distinct periods, each characterised by the insertion of a new machine.

The three periods are:

• from 1898 to 1906 semi-automatic machines;
• from 1905 to 1917 automatic rotating machines;
• from 1917 onwards, fully automatic machines fed by glass drops.

To point out and highlight the progress in the bottle industry, backed-up by the rapid and determinant help of new techniques relating to melting furnaces and machines, attention should be paid to the parameters that today are considered fundamental in the production of bottles that are able to satisfy in the best possible way, the increasing demands from the beverage industry, particularly the wine industry.

Technique is rigorously applied to keep the following parameters under control: capacity, weight, shape, colour, safeguarding surface integrity. The problem of optimising each one of these parameters is very complex and is not easy to analyse with traditional methods.

Today, to solve this problem rationally, mathematical models have been built, based on a vast series of experimental data to see the influence of the bottles, geometry, its weight and distribution of the glass on the mechanical resistance, with surprising reliability. The complexity of these calculations requires the indispensable use of an electronic calculator.

Nowadays, the glass industry, both industrial and artisan, is leader of its home market, and also taking a large share of the market abroad.

To conclude, we can say that glass was and will always be an ideal and undisputed material for containing and preserving beverages, and wines in particular. Through the ages and the various civilisations, from the Pharaohs to today’s day and age, glass continues to convey its great fascination.

Piero Pittaro

In the guidebook are inserted the reproductions of some important pieces of my collection (P.P.).