January brought about one of my favorite events of the
year. The Little Rhody Bottle Club
annual show in South Attleboro. As the first boxes of bottles were getting
unpacked, I made my first round. The
first table I checked had an interesting looking medicine on it. My heart almost skipped a beat when I saw the
embossing. Huston’s Consumption Cure Providence, R.I. Rhode
Island cures are exceedingly rare, and to find an
unlisted one like this never happens. It
gladly paid the $40 he was asking and secured my new treasure.
Remember my friend Bill who dug a few Oates Brothers blobs
last week? That wasn’t all he
found. I noticed a worn and rather old
looking blob at his table, and to my excitement it was a J. Scheminger 18 Snow St. Providence, RI! Quite a few blogs back I had bought a J.H.S.
Snow St. Providence blob. Then out of
the blue I found the matching porcelain stopper. To find this one was beyond
coincidental. When he was at 18 Snow St.
he ran the Dresden Hotel. This blob is packed with embossing, including a "whoops", embossing Registered twice.
I have many George A. Peckham bottles. It seems the slug plate engravers decided to
try every variation possible by changing the punctuation. My newest George A. Peckham Grocers Supplies Providence, RI is no
exception. This example has a period
after Peckham and Providence
(the latter should have been a comma).
Another exciting find was an unlisted error version of a Barbour’s
bottle. This example was a Barbour’s Westerly & Watch Hill, RI. The engraver for these bottles was so bad he
made a total of three different errors. But,
this bottle didn’t say Nesterly or Westerly,
NY. Instead there was backwards A in
Barbours. It’s not as noticeable, but
was still a nice surprise.
Recently a fellow collector from Warwick was kind enough to give me two free
boxes of common bottles he was getting rid of.
Among these “commons” were three RI sodas I didn’t have, including an
unlisted J.L. and P. Gannon Providence,
RI. There are no listed examples
with “and” spelled out.
