Abstract: An apparatus and process for coating an article utilizes a chuck to grip the bottleneck. The chuck includes spring fingers which are positioned to engage the bottleneck at equally spaced locations and which are shaped to fit a recess in the bottleneck so as to hold the bottle in place. The chuck includes a nose which fits inside the bottleneck to center the bottle, and the spring fingers are carried by a collar that can slide up and down to bring the spring fingers into or out of engagement with the bottle. Each of the spring fingers is part of a U-shaped spring member, and another part of each spring member holds a sleeve in place which surrounds the spring fingers and the top of the bottle. The sleeve protects the neck of the bottle from unintentional spray coating.