The bottle used to create Jeannie's home is actually a 1964 Jim Beam decanter, a special bottle design used by Jim Beam to help sales around Christmas time.  The bottles came in a gold foil box prominently displaying an artists rendition of the bottle, and it was hoped that they would be purchased by the public as Christmas gifts.  The bottles themselves were manufactured by the T. C. Wheaton Company of Millville, N.J., founded by Dr. Theodore C. Wheaton in 1888.

Jim Beam President, Martin Lewin saw a similarly shaped bottle during a trip to Germany.  When he returned he asked Wheaton Glass if they could come up with something similar.  Conceptual artist Jack Becker drew the first bottle designs that were later placed on the foil box.  The drawings were then given to bottle sculptor, Roy Cramer, who crafted the now famous bottle design.

The true facts of how the bottle came to be used on the show were shrouded in mystery for many years.  We have since learned that Gene Nelson, director of 10 episodes in the first season was the man who found the bottle and brought it to the Screen Gems art department to be painted as Jeannie's bottle.

With the first season of the show being shot in black and white, the art department would require a design that would allow the uniqueness of the bottle to be captured on film. It was decided that a contrasting gold paint would be used on the bottle's natural dark color.  Vines and leaves painted in gold were placed on middle and neck of the bottle, while the unusual reversing tear shaped designs on the bottom bell of the bottle would be painted solid gold, giving us what is now referred to as the First Season Golden Vines bottle. In the series, the bottle's original stopper was left on the beach where Maj. Nelson found Jeannie, but who else but a genie would want a bottle without it's stopper? With need of stopper to keep his new found genie contained, Maj. Nelson grabbed a stopper from his bar to cork the bottle.  The stopper he grabbed was from a 1956 Old Grand Dad liquor bottle.  The stopper was a unique tri-angled glass and cork stopper.  These bottles & stoppers were in high demand and had fetched as much as $495 for the stopper alone at one time, but over the years, as more and more "serious" collectors found their stoppers and since I introduced my resin replicas, the demand for original glass stoppers has waned.  Most go unsold on eBay as sellers who recently found them have missed the party and are still hoping for that big "pay day".

As color filming became available in 1966, it was decided that the contrasting bottle was no longer needed, so Jeannie's home got an extreme home make over.  Bob Purcell, an artist at Screen Gems  was brought in to create the now famous design for the second season bottle. The design consists of a series of interlacing arches that go around the middle and neck of the bottle.  The interiors of these arches are filled with gold and display a diamond design at the top. Although the original designs and colors list the bottle's base coat as mulberry, the bottle shown in the TV episodes looks more like a metallic purple.  Jeannie bottle artists have deviated from "established" color codes based on personal preference and/or a desire to create bottles that look like what they saw on TV.

There is a common misunderstanding about the serial numbers on the bottom of each bottle.  All of the 1964 Jim Beam decanters come with a series of numbers that are identical to each bottle, all except for one, the last number. 

The serial numbers for all bottles start out with the same set up number (D-334-119-64). 
D-334 is the customer permit number. 
The first 1 represents an internal factory number.
Then comes the year of manufacture ... 1964.
The final number is called a cavity number.  This refers to the number of the mold used to cast the bottle.  They range from 1 to 16.  Some cavity 1 bottles were actually cast from two different #1 molds.  You can tell the difference in how the number one is formed.

A total of 16 cavities were used in the production of these bottles, although cavity 16 bottle are extremely rare and next to impossible to find and it is estimated that 500,000 - 600,000 bottles were produced.  No exact number has ever been discovered.  There is a great deal of debate as to which cavity number is more "valuable" or rare.  I can tell you from personal experience buying and selling these bottles that in my opinion, cavity numbers 9, 10, and 11 come up very rarely.  I find number 1, 2, and 3 bottles all the time, they aren't so rare as some sellers would like you to think.