icon for Home page
icon for Kid's Home page
icon for Digital Collection
icon for Activities
icon for Turns Exhibit
icon for In the Classroom
icon for Chronologies
icon for My Collection

Online Collection

Detail 1
(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
Contact us for information about using this image.

front
front


label levels:

Beginning around 1900, returnable containers were widely used for the delivery of goods such as milk or soft drinks. Milk had been sold to customers from cans or covered buckets, but concerns about sanitation and freshness led to regulations for the sale and delivery of milk. Dairies either had their own bottles made, or they could purchase more generic bottles, like this one, which were sent to stores for sale. Stores then would return a specified number to the dairy for refilling. But the increasing cost of equipment needed to sterilize these bottles and the inherent savings in consolidating milk delivery led to increasingly larger milk distributors. By the 1950s, a smaller number of distributors were delivering milk. This milk was often collected from a number of small dairies in their vicinity. These larger operations usually had their own glassware custom-decorated with their own logos, and generic returnable glassware such as this example disappeared.

 

top of page

Milk Bottle

date   c. 1930
height   5.37"
process/materials   glass
item type   Household Goods/Food Service Tools & Equipment
accession #   #1985.0024.013


Look Closer icon My Collection icon Detailed info icon


ecard icon Send an e-Postcard of this object



See Also...

Milk Bottle

Milk Bottle


button for Side by Side Viewingbutton for Glossarybutton for Printing Helpbutton for How to Read Old Documents

 

Home | Online Collection | Things To Do | Turns Exhibit | Classroom | Chronologies | My Collection
About This Site | Site Index | Site Search | Feedback