Syndicated columnists
Glass bottles were expensive packages for alcoholic drinks and other liquids, including many beauty products, by the late 1700s. But makers liked to give products a permanent label, not just a pasted, handwritten or printed paper label. So bottles were made with a thin layer of glass that was heated to cover the label and adhere it to the bottle permanently. Other less decorative bottles were made with the product name captured in the mold.
A label under glass couldn’t fall off, get damaged or become illegible, so they were favored by apothecaries, the drug stores of the past. Many of these glass-covered labels were handwritten with the Latin names of medicines using fancy style gold-leafed letters. Glass Works Auctions featured milk glass barber bottles in an auction that included an American circa 1880-1900 barber bottle. It has a shaker top and a label under glass with the name “W.L. Doremus, Bay Rum” surrounding the head of a girl in a colorful bonn