Blind Pig and the Acorn Banner

Old Blue Bottle

April 28, 2026

vintage avon perfume bottle

Matt knows I’m plum foolish about old bottles. He keeps an eye out for any he thinks I might like.

The best place to find old bottles is at an old dump site. In the days before trash pickups, land fills, and garbage dumpsters folks picked a site on their land and used it to dump unwanted things.

Over the years we’ve been blessed to dig in old dumps on several friends’ property as well as areas here in Wilson Holler.

The land Matt owns in Georgia has old dump areas on it.

When he is deer or turkey hunting sometimes he’ll come across an old piece of glass and sometimes the bottle is still intact. He always carries the unbroken ones home to me.

On his recent turkey hunting trip he didn’t see any turkeys, but he did find me a few bottles.

My favorite one is the cobalt blue bottle at the top of this post.

blue bottle with gold top

I showed it in a recent video and lots of folks shared information about it with me. Lori sent me this photo of what the bottle originally looked like. She said she knew it was an Avon perfume bottle (Mesmerize) because her grandmother sold Avon for years.

The blue is stunning and the shape is nice too. I wondered about the diagonal indentions at the top of the bottle, now thanks to Lori I know they used to hold something gold.

Interestingly Matt found another blue bottle exactly like this one a few years back. I’ve had it sitting in my kitchen window ever since he brought it home. Now I have a matching pair.

Tipper

Subscribe for FREE and get a daily dose of Appalachia in your inbox

Similar Posts

36 Comments

  1. I also love cobalt blue bottles. I’ve never seen this one and how nice a reader knew it was an Avon. Great find Matt!

  2. I love the blue bottle ,Matt is very thoughtful to find those for you.
    My husband worked for the city driving a recycle truck and he brought me somw cole ball blue wine bottles . I still have them. I used the short one for my olive oil for years.

  3. Such a beautiful bottle, and how sweet that Matt looks for special bottles for you. Thank you for showing your special treasures with us.

  4. I love the Colby blue. A beautiful color indeed. Avon has quite a few pretty bottles. I have collected a few over the years. Most still have the cologne in them. Although it’s been quite some time since I last bought any. When I see the cobalt bottles it brings back memories of “Evening in Paris” Cologne.
    Miss Tipper, Sending you and your beautiful daughters wishes for a wonderful upcoming Mother’s Day. God bless your family and all the Acorns today, tomorrow and always.

  5. Pretty bottle! I know you enjoy the sun coming though it in your kitchen window. Having a bottle tree is on my list of things to do in my garden. I have some bottles of different colors I am saving, and need to select my tree. We had a storm here early this morning. Storms again tomorrow, but nothing serious forecasted thankfully so far. We so need every drop of rain we can get.

  6. I love small old bottles, especially the blue ones. I have a bottle tree with blue beer bottles. My husband and I dumpster dived for them, years ago at the local dump. We don’t drink beer but loved the bottles.Now that my husband is in Heaven, this is a sweet memory.
    I’m enjoying the glorious rain today. It’s been over a month since we had any at all. Not even a sprinkle. I’m so thankful!

  7. That’s a beautiful bottle. I love cobalt blue. Where there’s a dump, there’s always a treasure. I’m happy that you now have a matching pair.

  8. Tipper your blue bottle took me back down memory lane… in the 50s and 60s, my dad would occasionally gift my mom with a gift set of “Evening in Paris “ and all the bottles in the set were cobalt blue. As a little girl, I thought they were so beautiful and smelled good too!

  9. It certainly is a beautiful bottle, Tipper – I love that color blue – when you first showed it my thought was that it held a fragrance at one time – and now for you to have ‘twins’ of same shape and color bottle – wonderful!! My John & I loved to poke about and gather ‘old things’ – but when one downsizes to a bachelor/studio suite so does what one can fit into such a small space and it becomes necessities only.

  10. We have been getting a good soaking in rain this morning after getting a good rain Saturday. More rain forecast all week especially Saturday. My wife’s aunt sold Avon for many years, I have a 1970’s blue Ford truck, some plastic replicas of Winchester shotgun shells and some green Coleman lanterns all made or sold by Avon. Since I and now my son collect and restore the OLDER ( before 85) Coleman lanterns, I particularly like the lanterns, the yellow liquid inside makes the lanterns look like they are burning.

    Debbie, I contributed last night to B’s go fund. The name will show as Jimmy, Randy is my nickname, very few would know Jimmy, please post her address.

      1. No, Jimmy Randall, James is my son, we didn’t think about how much confusion this would cause when we named him James Randall. James was part of his grandfather’s name. There was already a family member named Jimmy so I got stuck with the nickname Randy. I am not much on this new technology, I just use an old email that my son James once had, it will show his name on it. I only know what 409 means none of the rest, no 409 does not stand for the famous early 60’s Chevrolet engine.

  11. I have a little cobalt blue Avon cologne bottle in the shape of a US Mail Jeep, modeled after the WWII military jeep . The cab is made of plastic but the body is glass. My wife bought it for me a long time ago, right around 50 years. It’s a one owner and is in excellent condition.

  12. That is a beautiful shade of blue. How sweet that Matt keeps his eye out for you. For some reason I think a few sprigs of Black Eyed Susan’s would look so pretty in that—the contrast of blue and yellow. I was thinking more about the wilted lettuce salads and pondering how many vitamins are fat-soluble. In other words, your body can absorb the nutrients better when consumed with fat. Our ancestors knew a lot of these things. I’ve only had wilted lettuce salads a couple times, but I’m anxious to make one here soon. Have a blessed day, everyone!

  13. Seeing the headline, for a moment there I thought you might be referring to blue bottle flies, something you certainly do not want to have around.

  14. Beautiful bottle Matt found for you. You are truly blessed with a husband that even while he’s hunting thinks of you, his loving wife. I know you do the same for him by making a favorite food for him to enjoy when he’s on his way home. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, y’all are perfect for each other. Truly blessed!

  15. I have a large box of old coke bottles and another one of the old glass insulators that were once used on utility poles. My wife asks, “Why are you keeping these?” I say, “Because they may be valuable some day.” But I guess the real reason is I hate the idea of getting rid of anything that reminds me of the past.

    1. Jackie, I worked for a company in Greenville, SC that rebuilt textile mill card machines from 1973 to early 1976. This was back when the glass Coke bottles had the name of a city on the bottom of the bottle. Our drink vending machine only had 12 oz Coke Cola drinks. At lunch some of the few workers in my department (about 10) would make 10 cent bets on whose bottle came from the farthest city. I have heard of boys shooting those glass insulators with their sling shots.

  16. Hi Tipper and Acorns. Did y’all get rain this morning? I hope so, I have been praying for our drought-stricken mountains. My Fleabane is up everywhere now. I’ll gather it for tea. My buttercups are all over as well. I’ll post photos on my facebook and blog later if I can get my camera to download. I’ve dropped it a lot lately. Poor little Kodak. It’s been a great camera. I love the cobalt blue glass bottles. Cobalt Blue glass was original used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for easily identifying poison. Due to the invention of electric lighting and better labeling in the 1920’s it started being used for light sensitive perfumes and cosmetics. Mid 20th century it became noted for use in high end perfumes.

      1. I was awakened at 6:30 AM by the flashing of lightning and the rolling of thunder. I normally don’t get up until around 7:30 so I closed my eyes again and listened to the patter of rainfall on the metal roof. Next thing I knew it was 9:02!
        Do you think God might have created early morning thunderstorms just so an old man could get a little extra sleep now and then?

  17. What a beautiful bottle for your collection! Matt is so sweet to always be thinking of you when you two are away from each other. Lovebirds!!

  18. Wow, my mom had the same hobby; she loved finding old house sites and their trash piles and digging for old bottles. I remember going with her a few times when I was little. She has a lot of White House vinegar bottles from those trips.

  19. I remember the cobalt bottle from Avon. I have a light teal one which contained bath oil. They went through a time where the perfumes and bath products were in these pretty little glass bottles in the early 70s. I had an uncle who liked to use his metal detector to hunt for old bottles. He used to go to old homesteads and found many old bottles of which some he sold for very good prices.

    1. Your uncle might have found old bottles “while” looking for metal with his metal detector. Glass isn’t a metal so the detector doesn’t “see” it, however if there is a metal cap on the bottle it will “detect” that.
      Old dumpsites are usually full of metal, so it didn’t find the bottles directly, it still helped him find where they might be.

      1. Yes, if you’re looking at garbage dumps you would expect to find glass and metal. He also found coins and jewelry.

      2. Yes, well I said he went to old homesteads. People had dumps where they tossed items they no longer wanted. This would obviously include metals and glass. He also found coins and jewelry. Why be so nit-picky?

  20. Oh WOW—what a beautiful and so unusual old bottle!!! I love old bottles. My dad had a nice collection of old bottles he found through the years—I am not sure whatever happened to them. Sometimes I pick up old bottles at antique stores, especially when they remind me of some of the old bottles that daddy had in his collection. I especially like the purple and cobalt blue bottles.

  21. cobalt blue, my mother used to collect that stuff, God rest her soul, got some very severe thunder in the distance, God protect us keep us safe and well, but we do need rain, God bless you friend have a great day

  22. Nothing to do about the blue bottle, except to say I am glad Tipper is happy with it. I do know about the dumps on property, several are on my property, all started by my family before trash pickup or the nearby landfill. When I was able to bird hunt and you were welcome to hunt on your neighbors property, I would come across trash dumps and would look around to see if I could find anything I wanted.

    I have been laying here awake for 2 hours and been looking at the weather radar, I see many areas of the country are having bad thunderstorms right at this minute. I hope everyone is safe. I know many areas need the rain including my area. Before going to bed, I read this on a local news channel last night. Despite some government handouts, many generational farmers are choosing not to plant this year because of the drought and cost of fertilizer and fuel, it has went up nearly 50% this spring since the war started and the farmers say the are unable to afford the cost this year. It said our area of SC has had only 8 inches of rain since last October, the normal should be 16 inches. The national weather service said it will take 15-16 inches of rain in the next two months to get out of drought conditions. I don’t think that will happen even though the weather pattern is hopefully changing and there will be a better chance of rain this summer.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *