A couple years ago I started a Facebook group called Bottle
Collectors. I never had high hopes for
it, but hoped a few collectors would find their way to it. I was quite surprised when it had over 100
members a year later. Currently there
are over 600 members providing a constant stream of great pictures and
knowledge. My jaw nearly fell off when I
saw a recent bottle that was posted.
After securely reattaching it, I gazed in wonder at the sight before me. A super early and crude utility style bottle
was embossed T. Addeman Prov. RI. I was so excited because this is one of the
most important documented bottles from Rhode
Island.
Firstly, it is definitely a contender for the earliest embossed bottle
from RI. It probably dates from the
1840s, but could be late 1830s. The only
challenger would be the Dr. Wadsworth pontiled torpedo soda. Secondly it is olive green, and there are
only two other RI bottles in that color (CAP Mason Alpine Hair Balm, Simmons
& Spencer Schnapps), but those aren’t pontiled. This example even has a label! It was a blacking bottle. I would easily call this one of the Top 5 RI
bottles, along with the Ira Harvey teepee and CAP Mason Alpine Hair Balm.
I recently found a rare Hopkin’s
Magic Gold Dust medicine bottle.
Well I started to ask around, and it turns out that they aren’t as rare
as I thought! A fellow digger in Maine found a
rectangular one, and one had turned up on ebay (which I unforgivably
missed). The ebay example was the most
exciting discovery. It is very early
looking and has a fancy design.
One bottle I found in Digger Odell’s Indian Bottles &
Brand book was Checini’s Indian Sebago
the Great Blood Purifier. Research
confirmed that Louis Checini of Providence
issued a trademark for the words “Indian Sebago”. RI Indian medicine bottles are right up there
with the cures, aka very rare!
Fellow collector David Gates has an impressive collection of
RI bottles. One of his “dark horses” is
a small bottle that would qualify as “miscellaneous”. Rustoff
by the Rustoff Company Providence, RI. It must have not worked well because I have only seen two so far.
A particularly bittersweet loss involved an unlisted RI
whiskey bottle. When a McGough Bros. Canal St. Providence, RI
bottle surfaced on ebay, I was all in.
Apparently someone wanted it more than me, and I lost by $1 in the final
seconds.
A nice colored squat soda that is kind of known to be but
not listed as a RI bottle is S.J. Esten. In 1865 Samuel J. Esten was located at the
rear of 95 North Main St. in Providence. He was listed as manufacturing soda and
mineral waters. He was the successor to
Isaac H. Penno who made Penno’s Mineral Water.
