Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Past Finds 4


This week I’m feeling bold, and have decided to lead off with a soda bottle!  During a Little Rhody Bottle Club meeting, I traded some Boston bottles to Bill Rose.  He had recently found a Frank P. Casey North Smithfield, RI blob soda.  While these are around, this unlisted version had very bold embossing in a large tombstone shaped slugplate.  Besides the amber bottles Casey put out, this has to be his nicest clear one.  As always, I owe Bill some nice Boston bottles…



I recently obtained an amusingly named RI medicine via ebay.  Dr. J. Lariviere Female Health Regulator from Manville, RI (of all places).  While listed, I noticed two things about this example.  First, the first line simply read Dr. J. Lariviere (no apostrophe or S).  Second, the lip was a square collar, not the usual double collar lip (see online picture).  I had to haggle with the seller over his asking price, and again over the shipping because the wandering bottle had made its way to Canada.  Thankfully, it showed up at my door intact.


I’m going to mention another soda now, so hold your breath.  I recently returned to the place where it all started.  Roughly 14 years ago I visited a neighbor’s Llama farm, which had a nice cellar hole and 1950-60s dump next to it.  I found an innocent 1890s unembossed medicine bottle, and here I am now, 3,000 bottles strong!  One place I dug of interest on this property was a cistern.  It was filled in with a ton of cans and bottles.  Previously it had produced some ACL soda bottles in superb condition.  With help from my new digging friend Mike E., I was able to get to the bottom of it.  Two unlisted embossed RI sodas came out of that cistern.  One was a quart What Cheer Bott. Co. Inc of Providence, and the other a more exciting Shiloh Beverages art deco soda.  It was missing the top, but you don’t see many new art deco RI sodas.  I found it right next to a broken Shiloh Club Indian ACL, which can sell for up to $200.  Ah, so close!



Just when you thought I was done, here’s another soda for you!  At another club meeting, I bought a neat one off of Des, a collector from Mass.  It had that mysterious nature to it, simply embossed J.H.S. (maltese cross) 119 Snow St. Providence, RI.  I had to search a Providence street directory for Snow St. to find a John H. Scheminyer, a German immigrant.  After seeing his name I can see why he must have chosen to abbreviate it.
UPDATE:  I recently dug a matching porcelain stopper with the last name spelled out!  Given the scarcity of this bottle and the obscure location of the dig, I was amazed at the coincidence.  The address is different, but the street is the same.



I’ll finish off with two local medicines.  Some of you may be familiar with the Bottle Collectors group on Facebook.  I was appalled that there were no bottle collecting groups, so I decided to make one.  I almost forgot about it due to its inactivity, but it is currently 270 members strong.  As a token of appreciation for my work fostering the group, collector Steve Anderson gave me a Thomas A. Barber Pharmacist Ashaway, RI medicine.  There are a few pharmacy bottles from Ashaway, but all are scarce, and this unlisted example has a nice TAB monogram on the front.  Sure David Smith and David Gates have some Barbers, but perhaps not this size…
I also got lucky again on ebay and was able to expand my G.E. Greene collection.  Green was a pharmacist out of Hope Valley (and for a brief stint Wyoming) RI, and was the only pharmacist from the town to have embossed bottles.  A nice unlisted square example with an embossed mortar and pestle was found at an estate sale by a local ebayer, and well, the rest is history!  
I must apologize again, for some reason I never took pictures of some of these bottles, so I'll have to add them in the future.  I'll include a similar picture of the rectangular Greene bottle for now.