ROCKWOOD CERAMIC BESPOKE BOTTLE COLLECTION
HENRI BERTHE
FOUNDER, CEO
CHINA’s FIRST OWNED GLASS and CERAMIC BOTTLE FACTORY by a French group. A Chinese ceramic bottle manufacturer, located 1.30 hour from Shanghai, China, specializing in FANCY CERAMIC BOTTLES and jars for the spirit and beverage industry. A Rockwood Ceramics, we have cross-disciplinary teams that cover all areas of the production process. From customer relations representatives, creative designer, marketing experts and quality assurance managers, to ceramics specialists, French engineers and technicians, and a hands-on CEO.
WHAT SETS ROCKWOOD APART?
CHINA’s FIRST OWNED GLASS and CERAMIC BOTTLE FACTORY by a French group. A Chinese ceramic bottle manufacturer, located 1.30 hour from Shanghai, China, specializing in FANCY CERAMIC BOTTLES and jars for the spirit and beverage industry.
Our CERAMIC BOTTLE are perfectly adapted for whisky, Cognac , Gin and any spirit. With a low mold cost , $850.00 and a small Minimum order of 5000 ceramic bottles , our CERAMIC /PORCELAINE FACTORY opens the opportunity for start-ups to try the market .
With an extensive list of international spirit companies, from the STOLISHNAYA GROUP, with their KAH ceramic bottle , to GUN POWDER GIN , many TEQUILA, SCOTCH WHISKY and COGNAC PRODUCER have already experienced our HIGH QUALITY STANDARD, SPEEDY MOLD MAKING (45 DAYS), efficient service and follow up. We can decorated either by automatic machine with the INNER and OUTER glazing, décor , patterns , hand painting are possible at very competitive prices . note: as much as in GLASS MAKING there are many limitations with outstanding shapes , CERAMIC BOTTLES have almost no limitation, any shape can be done, from an EAGLE , with deployed winds, painted by hand, to a TRUCK, a PISTOL, or any animal , anything can be done and the highest the difficulty in making the ceramic bottle, the lower the minimum quantity .
We guaranty perfect fitting of the sealing cork thanks to our drilling technic of the inner mouth , keeping the same tolerances as glass bottles +/-0.5mm . if needed we have EUROPEAN CREATIVE DESIGNERS that can help you design the bottle and décor .
All kinds of caps are available , from a SWING CERAMIC CAP to wood caps, plastic caps and of course fancy ceramic caps like our COBRA SNAKE ceramic bottle , where the cobra head is made in ceramic with the perfect detail of the skin patterns .
Rockwood Custom Ceramic Bottles and Jars Collection
THE ART OF MAKING CERAMIC BOTTLES IN CHINA , by ROCKWOOD GLASS GROUP LTD
The unique PROCESS of CERAMIC MANUFACTURING in CHINA , mostly HAND MADE CERAMIC BOTTLES factory
Ceramic bottle process manufacturing in China has not changed for centuries. It is mostly artisanal , hand made ceramic is really a china signature . . most ceramic bottle factories in China will pretty much use the same manufacturing process. We start from a bottle design, same as for the glass bottle industry, a 3D design of the ceramic bottle is done .
From there we will make a CLAY BOTTLE , from this clay bottle made and finished by artists /artisans purely by hand , a PLASTER MOLD will be done. We basically make a plaster mold of the shape with all de details .
From this hand made plaster mold , in order to achieve a perfect ceramic bottle shape, the factory will create thousands of molds , contrarily to the glass bottle industry where a set of 8 molds per production line will produce millions of bottles, in the case of the ceramic bottle manufacturer , there is one plaster mold for about every 20 ceramic bottles formed. This plaster mold will be then discarded until the next bottle production when a new mold will be done .
The process of the artisan ceramic bottle is pretty much similar to glass bottle, liquid clay will be poured in the mold then blown to create the cavity. At this point there is no neck or mouth, the mouth will be added on a second stage to create the final ceramic bottle . the tolerances on ceramic bottles are slightly greater than in glass making bottles as there is a contraction of the clay during the cooking process.
As in glass making , the factory has a furnace with a slow conveyor belt to dry the clay , extremely slowly. The speed of drying/cooking is extremely important to avoid bubbles or weakness or retractions of flat surfaces.
The formed ceramic bottle is then placed on the glazing line. Glazing is the process of deeping the bottle in baths of paint , printing the inner walls and outside walls, if there are two glazing colors , a second pass will be necessary to give a different color finish on the outer walls.
Finally the serigraphy or hand painting of the label and décor will finalized the art piece. So it is important to remember that ceramic or porcelain bottles made in China , are totally artisanal, in ROCKWOOD CERAMIC FACTORY PLANT, we mix artisan technics and modern producing technics , making sure that the tolerances of the ceramic bottles are well respected, with size not varying over 2.5mm for the height , 1mm for the sides and 0,05mm for the inner mouth.
It is important to remember that whatever bottle shape we cannot make in glass , we can make it in ceramic. There is no limitation in the shape of ceramic bottles MANUFACTURING , it can go from an eagle with the winds deployed to a gun , a women body, a car or truck , all bottle shapes can be done, it is a matter of placing the pouring mouth at the proper side .
Many Scotch Whisky or Cognac bottlers are using ceramic bottles . it became fashion in the United States of America, Cognac and Scotland , to use CERAMIC bottles for the fancy spirits. Here is a list of the most fancy ceramic bottles for spirits made: for Scotch Whisky or Bourbon : LONG JOHN , BALLANTINES, SUNTORY, CHIVAS REGAL, GLENDFIDDICH
GLENMORE, WILLIAMM GRANTS, JIM BEAM and in COGNAC AREA: COURVOISIER, FRAPIN XO, CAMUS COGNAC, LARSEN XO COGNAC, HENNESSY COGNAC , even Coca Cola is now making some ceramic bottles for collectors .
One true advantage of CERAMIC BOTTLES MANUFATURING is the low cost of the mold. In average a ceramic bottle mold will cost $850.00 (including sampling of 3 pieces ) and the minimum orders are usually less than 5000 bottles, although the bigger the order the lower the price .
A BRIEF HISTORY OF CERAMIC BOTTLES AND JARS factoriesand manufacturing:
ROCKWOOD GLASS GROUP acquired an existing bottle ceramic factory in China in 2015. CEO HENRI BERTHE found that many customers were requesting exceptional bottle shapes that could not be achieved with glass , this is how the group invested in a small CERAMIC BOTTLE MANUFACTURER with a long experience in carving ceramic bottles.
CERAMIC BOTTLES and JARS, first appeared in China about 18 000 BCE, there were used to carry water and preserve food. Our museum includes some reproductions of these CERAMIC JARS or bottles , and strange enough in thousands of years, the technique to produce these CERAMIC BOTTLE has not change much.
We still use clay and water to make the material mixture , the cooking and glazing are achieved in the very same methods as in the early age of ceramic manufacturing, although bottle ceramic manufacturers created modern methods , using MOLDS to shape the bottles.
In Glass bottle making, there is a 2 piece mold ,made of iron and only a few molds are necessary to produce large numbers of bottles. In ceramic factories , there are thousands of molds made to produce large number of bottles.
The group produces today millions of bottles , some large customers like the SPI GROUP, STOLISHNAYA vodka and KAH TEQUILA are now produced in China, using craft ancestral methods to produce their ceramic bottles, same for COGNAC and WHISKY craft distillers looking for luxury ceramic collections.
Each CERAMIC BOTTLE is manufactured with a different style, there is not one model the same. The ceramic factory pays attention to every detail to make each bottle unique.
Ceramics is one of the most ancient industries going back several ,thousands of years. Once humans discovered that clay could be found in abundance and formed into objects by first mixing with water and then firing, a key industry was born. The oldest known ceramic artifact is dated as early as 28,000 BCE (BCE = Before Common Era), during the late Paleolithic period. It is a statuette of a woman, named the Venus of Dolní Věstonice, from a small prehistoric settlement near Brno, in the Czech Republic. In this location, hundreds of clay figurines representing Ice Age animals were also uncovered near the remains of a horseshoe-shaped kiln.
The first examples of pottery appeared in Eastern Asia several thousand years later. In the Xianrendong cave in China, fragments of pots dated to 18,000-17,000 BCE have been found. It is believed that from China the use of pottery successively spread to Japan and the Russian Far East region where archeologists have found shards of ceramic artifacts dating to 14,000 BCE.
Use of ceramics bottles and jars increased dramatically during the Neolithic period, with the establishment of settled communities dedicated to agriculture and farming. Starting approximately in 9,000 BCE, clay-based ceramics bottles became popular as containers for water and food, art objects, tiles and bricks, and their use spread from Asia to the Middle East and Europe. The early products were just dried in the sun or fired at low temperature (below 1,000°C) in rudimentary kilns dug into the ground. Pottery was either monochrome or decorated by painting simple linear or geometric motifs.
It is known that, around 7,000 BCE, people were already using sharp tools made from obsidian, a natural occurring volcanic glass. The Roman historian Pliny reported that the first man-made glass was accidentally produced by Phoenician merchants in 5,000 BCE, when, while resting on a beach, they placed cooking pots on sodium-rich rocks near a fire. The heat from the fire melted the rocks and mixed them with the sand, forming molten glass.
Archeologists have not been able to confirm Pliny’s recount. Instead, simple glass items, such as beads, have been discovered in Mesopotamia and Egypt dating to 3,500 BCE. At the beginning of the Bronze Age, glazed pottery was produced in Mesopotamia. However, it was not until 1,500 BCE that Egyptians started building factories to create glassware for ointments and oils.
One of the first breakthroughs in the fabrication of ceramics was the invention of the wheel, in 3,500 BCE. The introduction of the wheel allowed for the utilization of the wheel-forming technique to produce ceramic artifacts with radial symmetry.
Meanwhile, ceramic pottery evolved in its use of increasingly elaborated bottles and jars for liquid. Ceramic bottles made their way very late in the modern culture. Ceramic bottles were first use for decorative objects. Decorations also involved the use oxidizing and reducing atmosphere during firing to achieve special effects. Greek Attic vases of the 6th and 5th centuries BCE are considered the apex of this evolution.
What makes a bottle fancier
than the others?
Throughout the 16th century CE (CE = Common Era), earthenware remained the main class of ceramic products manufactured in Europe and the Middle East. The Chinese were the first to introduce high temperature kilns capable of reaching up to 1350°C, and, around 600 CE, developed porcelain (a material with less than 1% porosity) from kaolin clay. During the Middle Ages, trade through the Silk Road allowed for the introduction and diffusion of porcelain throughout Islamic countries first and later in Europe, due in large part to the journeys of Marco Polo.
By the 15th century the earliest blast furnaces were developed in Europe, capable of reaching up to 1,500°C. They were used to melt iron and were initially constructed from natural materials. When synthetic materials with better resistance to high temperatures (called refractories) were developed in the 16th century, the industrial revolution was born. These refractories created the necessary conditions for melting metals and glass on an industrial scale, as well as for the manufacture of coke, cement, chemicals, and ceramics.
Since then, the ceramic industry has gone through a profound transformation. Not only have traditional ceramics and glass become ubiquitous, but over the years new products have been developed to take advantage of the unique properties of these materials, such as their low thermal and electrical conductivity, high chemical resistance, and high melting point. Around 1850 the first porcelain electrical insulators were introduced, starting the era of technical ceramics.
After World War II, ceramics and glass have contributed to the growth of many technologically advanced fields, including electronics, optoelectronics, medical, energy, automotive, aerospace and space exploration. In addition, innovations in ceramic processing and characterization techniques have enabled the creation of materials with tailored properties that meet the requirements of specific and customized applications. In recent years, ceramic processing has gained new vigor from nanotechnology, which is allowing manufacturers to introduce materials and products with unconventional properties, such as transparent ceramics, ductile ceramics, hyperelastic bones, and microscopic capacitors.