Otto Zwietusch WIS G. Co bottle lightly polished restored to perfection

This antique bottle cleaning job is an example of perfection in cleaning extremely rare antique glass. The only other whole Otto Zwietusch green Wisconsin Glass quart came out of the ground with heavy case wear. Dark green glass shows flaws. The owner of the bottle at the time figured just like I did the color warrants cleaning the bottle to let light show through. Unfortunately when the antique bottle came out of the tumbler the owner didn't like the white marks that stuck out in like a sore thumb in the deep green glass. The bottle was tumbled numerous times. Keep in mind, at the time it was the only whole example known. To get rid of the undesirable marks in the glass the guy cleaning it cutting ‘at least' one sixteenth of an inch of glass off the bottle. The amount of glass removed in cleaning should be so slight as to not be measurable. In doing so he removed most of the mold seams, all marks from the mold, the striations and application marks of the blob and made the bottle oval shaped. To boot in polishing the bottle and wanting to preserve the Wis. G. Co maker mark on the bottom the guy put tape over the embossing on the bottom of the bottle before cutting the glass. There is literally a square ridge around the makers mark one sixteenth high where the tape protected the bottle. Yes that may be an antique bottle cleaning worst case scenario yet it doesn't matter how rare the bottle is, great care should be taken by the person polishing antique glass to preserve the character of the bottle like Steve takes every time he cleans any antique glass.

Steve did a minimalist glass tumble job on this bottle. He had his work cut out for him with heavy oxidization on the inside of the bottle. My instructions were no more than the bare minimum to clean the bottle while preserving the mold seams, embossing and original character. As you can see Steve did a spectacular job cleaning the bottle. It turned out better than I had hoped. Being the only example not over cleaned, this olive green Otto Zwietusch quart shows exactly the character it had the day it was made. After cleaning the bottle is unaltered and looks beautiful. This is a perfect example of how good Steve is at cleaning bottle. With a light polish this bottle is incredible.