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.
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.
