Article: FRAGILE RELICS.(Unwind)

Bottles are almost all plastic these days, but about two centuries ago, making bottles from glass was a lucrative industry in Ballston Spa. Essential to the mineral water industry, by 1850 there were more than 50 bottle factories in New York state.

One was a mile and a half from Lake Desolation near Ballston Spa, where men would blow bottles and wait for them to cool. They were then shipped to Saratoga Sprimgs to be taken to bottling plants.

At the time, it took five men to make one bottle or jar, says Jan Rutland, executive director of the National Bottle Museum on Church Avenue in Ballston Spa. "It was all done with a blowpipe, hand tools and lung ...

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