Summer Finds #6

As you will see by the next paragraph, I'm running just a little behind on my posts.  We just had frost today, so it is prime digging weather!

Welcome to the doldrums of summer!  It’s too hot to dig, so I usually stick to air conditioned buildings where avenues like Ebay can still produce bottles without me breaking a sweat.  A green art deco King Westerly, RI soda bottle was a fairly exciting discovery.  While King’s bottles are fairly common, I have never seen a green one before.  This example has been through the ringer, with heavy wear which I believe came from a lot of re-use and perhaps a few decades in the ocean.

One of the more unusually named bottling companies of RI is the Nectar Bottling Co. Providence, RI.  The image of flowers don’t inspire any manly images, so this might be why the company was short-lived.  This clear ABM quart is my second bottle from this company.

I have long been on the hunt for an affordable Caswell Hazard & Co. Chemists New York & Newport cobalt medicine bottle.  The example I am referring to is a small size which does not have the Latin motto embossed on the front.  These small examples (5” for this one) are a bit harder to come by.  I have a clear example of RI-132, but that bottle is not listed in cobalt blue.

A fellow collector (Tom) recently won a box lot at an auction that contained a bunch of decent Westerly, RI bottles.  I was able to cross three off of my wanted list, including a Havens Bottling Works Westerly, RI aqua ABM crown top quart.  This example had a 1926 date code, which is newer than I expected for an aqua soda.  There are no quarts listed on the LRBC website.  I have two versions now, and am hot on the trail of the third example that I dug broken!

Remember how I said it was too hot to dig in the summer?  Well, that is not necessarily true.  Too hot to dig comfortably perhaps, but when I’m hot on the trail of bottles, comfort takes a backseat.  I made my long overdue return to the salt marsh (my first time this year, and I was there as early as March last year!)  I went back to a spot with cantankerous neighbors that I never finished digging.  While they gave me and my partner grief, the authorities that showed up were more than understanding, and let us dig in peace.  My first find was one of my best, a William R. Potter Manufacturing Chemist Providence, RI medicine!  I have two William Potter bottles, and this was my first square example.