VICTORIAN ENAMELED BARBER BOTTLE Apple Green Colored Glass with Gold Gilt and Hand Painted White Enamel Daisies Circa 1880-1910

Beautiful apple green blown VICTORIAN ENAMELED BARBER BOTTLE with hand painted orange-centered white enamel flowers trimmed in gold gilt, circa 1880 – 1910. 

BARBER BOTTLES were used at the barbershop or in the home and would have held hair oil, bay rum, tonic, shampoo, witch hazel, rosewater or another cosmetic.  The nineteenth-century barber would have had several bottles in distinctive colors and shapes so he could identify what was in each one of them. Many were highly decorative.  Typically, he would fill them with hair tonics he made or had purchased in large containers.

These special fancy bottles were popular in the last half of the nineteenth century.  In 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act made it illegal to use refillable non-labeled bottles in a barbershop, and the bottles became obsolete.

The ball-base form BARBER BOTTLE measures 6 ¾” tall and 3 ¾” wide and has a rolled or folded finish.  A pontil scar is on the base.  It is great condition other than some faded gold gilt and has no chips or cracks. Around the neck/finish there are tiny lines in the glass, not scratches but from the manufacturing process.

Included in the images, but not the listing, is a page from the 1903 Kochs Barbers’ Supplies Catalog advertising a similarly shaped bottle, which the refer to as a Stand Bottle.

Note:  Historic bottles should not be used for food or beverage storage.