Engraved Bottle Openers

The strange history of a simple device

The bottle cap was patented in 1892 by a resident of Baltimore named William Painter. Known as the Crown Cork, it featured a corrugated-flange edge of 24 teeth and was lined with a thin cork disc. Painter was assigned a patent for a “Capped-Bottle Opener” two years later, but it says a great deal about human ingenuity that bottle caps met with greater success at first than bottle openers. The first customers to encounter Crown Cork caps primarily used their teeth, knives, or a table edge to get their drinks open.

Bottle openers as collectibles

Even as modern collectibles, antique bottle openers are rather neglected in comparison to corkscrews or bottle caps. Presumably this is because corkscrews are much older and bottle caps much more colorful and plenteous.

Some of the earliest antique beer bottle openers were small, handheld devices made from pressed metal or cast iron that used a toothed loop to pry off bottle caps. Oddly enough, one of Painter's original bottle opener illustrations featured a metal loop, but not to open bottles. Instead, a metal screwdriver-like tip would wrench open bottles after a finger was inserted through the loop.

In the 1910s and 20s, bottle openers were typically flat and shaped like horses, automobiles, and mermaids or naked women. These antique bottle openers usually featured incised, raised, or stamped letters advertising the name of a particular brewery or beverage company.