I passed your query on to Olive Jones and she basically reiterated much of
what George just wrote:

Hi, maybe George Miller would have some idea about costs as he has done so
much work on the introduction of the automatic bottle making machine.

I don't remember seeing any data.  Certainly late 19th century catalogs had
a cost structure for plates.  A lot of local firms, presumably with smaller
markets used these plates.  Whitall Tatum catalogues available on-line or
as reprints, will give some idea of what local firms could expect to pay
for the plates.  With embossed bottles local firms could expect to have
bottles returned to them for re-use, cutting the cost of new
bottles. Products with larger markets could bear the cost of specialised
bottles.

International products such as Perry Davis Painkiller, Murray and Lanman's
Florida Water, and Northrup and Lyman's Dr. Thomas' Eclectic Oil did have
bottles with French or Spanish labeling.

Olive

On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 6:50 PM, Barbara Voss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Dear Hist Arch'rs,
>
> For those of you looking for a puzzle or two to start your weekend off
> right:
>
> 1) Does anyone know, what would be the typical minimum production run for
> a 19th century custom embossed mold-blown bottle? What would be the tipping
> point when it would be worthwhile for a product manufacturer to contract
> with a glass bottle producer for customized embossed bottles with their
> company name, rather than putting printed paper labels on unembossed
> (plain) bottles? There would clearly be some investment on the part of the
> glass bottle producer in making the inset plates with the custom embossing
> mold; at what level of production would that be cost-effective?
>
> 2) On a related note, I'm looking for examples of 19th embossed bottles
> with bilingual (or even multi-lingual) labelling, from either
> archaeological or museum contexts.
>
> Thanks in advance everyone!
>
> --Barb
>
> -----------------------------------------------
> Barbara L. Voss, Associate Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 450 Serra Mall, Bldg. 50, Main Quad
> Stanford University
> Stanford CA 94305-2034
> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> https://web.stanford.edu/dept/anthropology/cgi-bin/web/?q=node/75
> https://stanford.academia.edu/BarbaraVoss
>
>
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