Timeless Traditions

Click images to see artist's work.

Jacqueline Bean (left) had just finished reading the best seller, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, in which the main character gives her mother a Victorian tear bottle, a gift that helps the women reconcile their past differences. As soon as I read that, I knew that I needed to have one of those. Her pursuit for tear bottles came up empty, and when she turned to the Internet, all she found were other women on a similar search.

Creativity was sparked, and Jacqueline, along with her friend Anna Graham (right), started their own business in Bozeman, Montana, called Timeless Traditions, and the two are manufacturing and marketing these endearing tear bottles.

Tear bottles go back centuries when mourners filled small, glass vials with tears and placed them in burial tombs as symbols of love and respect. The bottles, ornately decorated with silver and pewter, reappeared during Victorian times.

These small, exquisite glass bottles are used to symbolize deep emotion and are a unique and personal gift choice for many meaningful occasions. Not only are they perfect expressions of sympathy, they are also being used to celebrate other important rites of passage or simply as symbols of friendship.

Throughout history, people have used tear bottles for real or symbolic tears of love, sorrow, joy, and remembrance. As delicate as a teardrop itself, the tear bottle is a tradition of shared emotion and transformed relationships that has endured for nearly 3,000 years.

In the Old Testament of the Bible, the notion of collecting tears in a bottle appears in Psalm 56:8 when David prays to God, Thou tellest my wanderings, put thou my tears in Thy bottle; are they not in Thy Book? David's words remind us that God keeps a record of human pain and suffering and always remembers our sorrows.

Legends of tear bottles or lachrymatories abound in stories of Egypt and middle eastern societies. Tear bottles were prevalent in ancient Roman times, when mourners filled small glass vials with tears and placed them in burial tombs as symbols of love and respect.

Tear bottles reappeared during the Victorian period of the 19th century, when those mourning the loss of loved ones would collect their tears in bottles ornately decorated with silver and pewter. The tear bottles had special stoppers that allowed the tears to evaporate; once they were gone, the mourning period would end, but the bottle remained as a token of eternal devotion.

Timeless Traditions' heirloom-quality tear bottles are given to symbolize joy and love for memorable rites of passage. Graduations, weddings, anniversaries, and special birthdays are joyous occasions when a unique and lasting gift like the tear bottle will surprise and delight your loved ones. During times of sadness, such as illness, parting, or bereavement, a tear bottle can also convey heartfelt sympathy and concern.

Timeless Traditions uses only high quality materials and craftsmanship for the production of our historically-inspired tear bottles. The high-quality glass bottles are uniquely encased with metalwork and finished in gold plate, nickel silver, pewter, antique copper, and brass in the U.S.A. The flame-worked, contemporary designs are hand-blown by a Montana artist.

Now you, too, can continue the tradition and express your feelings with compassion and beauty.


Copyright © 2001-2004 Timeless Traditions, Inc.

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells is published by Harper Collins.

Part of this text was based on an article printed in Business to Business, a publication of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, November 2001. It is reprinted here with permission from the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.