Wine Bottles

Bottles of thick green glass were made with bottoms pushed up inside to increase the strength of the bottles and because glassmakers had trouble making a bottom flat enough to prevent wobbling. Glass bottles had to be sturdy to survive the long rough trip from France to Illinois. These containers were sometimes shipped filled with wine, but were also used for storing other liquids. Six wine bottles and a small cupboard were valued at 15 livres in the 1748 Baron inventory.

Reproduced from eighteenth-century fragments found at Cahokia
Made by Glass Elite, Williamsburg, VA, 1992

© Illinois State Museum 31-Dec-96