Well it should be no surprise that this week will cover more
of the Otis collection. I’ll start out
with a completely unlisted Lawson’s Drug
Store Wesminster St. Providence, RI.
Always an exciting find, these drug store bottles seem to be of a later
vintage (1905-1915) than other embossed pharmacy bottles. A thorough search was unable to turn up any
solid information on the company.
Even more exciting was an unlisted medicine from a “small
town”. A small oval cork top D.O. King MD Auburn, RI easily grabbed
my attention. There is only one other
medicine bottle known from Auburn, a section of Cranston.
One apparently scarce pharmacy bottle was an E.C. Thornton & Co. Pharmacists Providence, RI. It is listed as RI-631, but the height (a
little over 6”) was unknown.
I was happy to get an E.T.
Luther Druggist Olneyville, RI pharmacy bottle. This section of Providence has a handful of pharmacy bottles,
including one of my very first RI bottles.
This example is an unlisted 3-1/2” size.
I kind of have a thing for older blob top sodas. The early examples with crude embossing and
applied lips just have a great character to them. Easily one of the best examples of this was a
Finck & Hainbach Pine Cor. Page St.
Providence, RI blob. Out of the
hundreds of RI blobs I’ve seen and handled, this was easily the crudest looking
tall (9”+) blob I’ve ever seen. It is
unquestionably one of the first tall blobs ever made (early 1870s), as they
debuted about the same time Karl Hutter invented the popular lightning stopper
for them. Sadly it is damaged, but it is
still a pleasing sight to the eyes!
Another nice find was a T.
Blanchette 606 Broad St. Central Falls, RI handmade crown top soda. There are only two versions of the T.
Blanchette soda listed, and both are blob tops.
Sodas made in the 1905-1915 period can be found in identical styles with
blob and crown tops, as blobs weren’t completely phased out until about 1920.
