Displaying Vintage Photos in Glass Bottles and Jars

Looking for the perfect way to decorate that bare mantle, bookshelf or window sill? Try using old bottles as a creative and cheap way to display lovely old photographs. Most antique stores and flea markets offer boxes of thrown out antique photos on the cheap. Even cheaper and more exciting is using your own family’s old photos. Disclaimer: Just remember to make a high-quality color copy of your family photos because, depending on the bottle, they can be hard to retrieve once inside. Take it from me, you don’t want to piss your mother off by holding the only real photo of your great grandma Stella hostage in a $2 tonic bottle for all eternity. (I know mom. Lesson learned.)

Over the past several months, I have been collecting antique milk bottles from local markets. The pros of using milk bottles are that they have a nice wide neck so not only are they easy to clean after purchase, its also easier to get photos down into them. And if you are lucky, you may find some that still don an old milk company logo. The one drawback I have found in using milk bottles is that they are only available in clear class. If your prefer some variety with colored glass, try something like the old Ball jars. Either way, always pay attention to the bottle mouth/neck size. Smaller bottles will force you to roll up your photos very tight to get them through the mouth and they will not likely unwrap themselves once inside. If this happens, try inserting a kebab skewer or a chop stick down into the bottle to push the edges of the photo open.

When my collection is complete, I will post some photographs of it for you all!