A collector on the Bottle Collectors
group on Facebook recently posted their finds at the National Bottle
Show in Tennessee. At first I thought they were all foreign bottles,
but when I looked closer I did a double take. There was a big
Ferro-China style medicine embossed Societa Per Le Industrie
Chimiche Providence, RI!
That's the Industrial Chemical Company in Italian. Raffaele
DeAngelis, the founder of the company, immigrated from Italy, so it
would make sense that he catered to the Italian immigrant crowd.
Needless to say I contacted the collector and we made a deal. It is
the second known medicine from RI embossed in another language, and a
pretty impressive one too!
Nothing gets the blood pumping like
coming across a completely unknown RI bottle. When I saw an Acton
Bros. Newport, RI crown top on
ebay, the week-long wait was agonizing. There was surprisingly
little interest in the bottle, and I easily won it. The Acton
brothers ran the City Hotel for only 3 short years (1901-1903) before
going their own ways. Often times hotel owners would bottle their
own soda or liquor, and this bottle is pretty solid proof of that!
On the opposite end of the spectrum,
there are bottles you are almost guaranteed to find on a dig. A
George A. Peckham Grocers Supplies Providence is definiteley
one of them. I've all but lost count of how many variants I have.
I found two on my last marsh dig, and sure enough, one was new! I
had this variant in clear, but this one is aqua.
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| (example on left) |
One of our club members was having a
moving sale recently, and my “informant” notified me of the
presence of some RI bottles. I came back with a nice Palmer &
Madigan Importers Providence, RI quart whiskey. It is listed as
RI-1735, which I had, but wait! It looked a lot different. My
version had “chubby” shoulders that gradually merged with the
neck, while this new example had squared off shoulders leading to a
straight stovepipe neck. This usually doesn't qualify as a new find,
but the style was different enough that I though it warranted
attention.
My persistent antiquing finally paid
off when I spotted a new dealer with a bunch of soda bottles for $5
each. I walked away with four, including a deco style Twin City
Spring Beverages Central Falls, RI. It is probably one of my
favorite RI deco bottles, which I already had in green. This clear
one completes the unlisted pair!
