Bottle Patterns - the art of the Pattern Maker

Wooden Bottles used in producing  glass wine bottles.
Mixed in with some other nicely shaped bottles.

     Once upon a time there were men with great skills in wood working, they were part cabinet maker and part sculptor.  The craft was called "pattern making"and has pretty much been eliminated by CAD and computer controlled manufacturing.

  

   The bottle patterns sitting on this shelf date from the era when an artist or designer drew with  pencil on a piece of paper, a draftsman rendered it to scale and then it was sent to a Pattern Maker to be created in 3D. Cars were and sometimes still are rendered in clay but most small objects, things to be cast in metal or glass first appeared in wood.

   These bottles were turned on a lathe from maple, maple is hard and straight grained. Even though the designer had a picture in their mind's eye of how the object would look, a model still needed to be created so the feel and balance of the bottles could be experienced.  Once the design was finalized the models were  used to create molds for the bottles and then the molds were used in manufacturing.

   Once the molds were created, the pattern, so carefully created by the craftsman had no more value, and would be discarded, or the materials re-used, 

   

   Years ago Eva saw and appreciated the pattern maker's art so did not let these bottle patterns be discarded.