A recent house call in Pawtucket
was pretty disappointing. For reasons
unknown I paid too much and am hoping to break even. One of the bottles was a badly damaged E.A. Gavitt Jr. Narragansett Pier, RI
handmade crown top. The listed version
has a comma after Jr., so this was a minor unlisted variant.
Another surprise from the dismal house call was a common Dr. J. Miller’s Vegetable Expectorant
Providence RI. The listed version
has a comma after Providence,
and this one lacks it. Sometimes with
the more common bottles these are just online errors. The first entries in the LRBC bottle book
didn’t pay as close attention to details that later became more essential to
differentiate variations. I’ll have to
check my other examples in storage to confirm that both versions exist.
A recent antiquing trip though RI was unusually
productive. Among the finds were a T.M. Morris Bristol, RI machine made
crown top soda. This example was
embossed on the shoulder in two merged rectangles.
One of the more interesting finds was an unlisted Batcheors priof ABM soda. The unusual lip is embossed “Registered
Patented “Priof”. The priof top was
advertised as an alternative to the crown top.
The inventors claimed it would prevent chipping when the bottle cap was
removed. To the contrary, this style
ended up chipping more often than the crown top, and was quickly
discontinued. This particular bottle
dates to the 1920s.
A recent ebay purchase gave me a bottle I missed years ago
at the Little Rhody Bottle Show. It was
one of the neatest RI pharmacy bottles I’ve seen, and when I came back to get
it someone was walking away with it in their pocket. It was embossed It Pays to Trade at Powells Newport, RI. When I got my example I was excited to see it
was a different version! It had a lot of
characteristics of a machine made medicine bottle. It has a double reinforced lip, fluted
shoulders, and Oz. and CC measurements.
The base is embossed Blue Ribbon, a bottle company which began in 1908. The back of the bottle is embossed Quality on
the shoulder and Purity on the heel. It
is common to find ABM bottles with only this slogan embossed. It certainly is an interesting bottle!
