Otis Collection pt. 7

Of the many Palmer & Madigan whiskey bottles listed, I have a preference for the aqua examples.  This Palmer & Madigan Importers Cor. Hay & Friendship Sts. Providence pint is unlisted with the AGS Co. trademark on the base.  While most listings don’t include trademarks on the bottom of the bottle, the Palmer & Madigan bottles are an exception.  Note that this might be RI-1740, but the lack of a picture and no trademark mentioned leave room for the unlisted argument.

Included in the Otis collection was an entire family of Chemical Industrial Co. R. DeAngelis Providence, RI cobalt blue medicine bottles.  These attractive bottles come in a number of varieties, but none are listed with a plain screw cap top.  Among the family I acquired three sizes; 5-1/2”, 7-1/4”, and 8-1/4”. (pictured are smallest and largest sizes)

Another commonly found RI medicine is marked D. & M. Co. Providence.  While I have a couple sizes of this bottle, an 8” example stuck out to me.  Sure enough, instead of being a plain square it had rounded sides on the back and a narrower body and top.  The patent date for the “special” shape on the bottom convinced me to declare this an unlisted version.

I found a pair of S.W. Himes medicine bottles from Phenix, RI in one of the first dumps I’ve dug.  Their neat shape (3 panels on the front with a rounded oval back) make them pretty attractive.  I was excited to see this large 7-1/2” example with fancy script embossing.  The front reads:  S.W. Himes & Co. Manufacturing Pharmacists Phenix, RI. 

Yet another large unlisted medicine was a Geo. L. Claflin & Co. Pharmacists Providence, RI.  This 8-1/2” bottle was an unlisted size.

Spring Finds #3

Welcome back!  I apologize for the delay since my last post.

 

I’ll pick up where I left off in my last post, the Stillwater Antique Center.  My second find of the day (also reasonably priced) was a J.A. Hebert Central Falls, RI handmade crown top soda.  While crown top examples of this bottle are listed with fancy script embossing, this one has a simple slug plate.

I will now return to more of the ever-impressive Otis collection!  Next up is yet another Standard Bottling Co. Pawtucket, RI.  This 7oz. ABM crown top is unlisted, and one of the newest Standard bottles I have come across.

Just when I couldn’t think of another Standard Bottling Co. bottle, surprise!  How about a seltzer?  While not as striking as the etched wine, it’s a great looking seltzer, and it happens to be my third etched bottle from the company.  What variety!

The Maine Bottling Co. of Providence, RI achieved moderate success in the sale of carbonated beverages.  This unlisted shoulder and heel embossed 16oz. bottle isn’t much to look at, but it does fit nicely between my 8oz. and quart sized examples.

Another slightly more interesting shoulder and heel embossed soda is a quart sized Yacht Club Bottling Works Centerdale, RI.  There are no quart-sized embossed bottles listed from the company, so this is an excellent addition to the family!

Spring Finds #2

I’ll take a break from the Otis collection this week to catch up with my other acquisitions.  One bottle I was trying to track down was a Warwick Club West Warwick, RI seltzer bottle.  It is easily the rarest bottle from the prolific Warwick Club, and the fancy siding gives it a nice look.

I was excited to go to the New England Antique Bottle Club’s show in Dover, NH for the second consecutive year.  I found a lot of good deals last time, and this time was no exception!  I made a trade with a friend for a trio of James O’Hare Pharmacist Providence, RI medicines.  One was an unlisted 3-1/2” size.

The only unlisted RI bottle I bought at the show was a nice early E.G. Champlin Druggist Westerly, RI.  While listed in aqua, it was not listed in clear.  There are only two pontiled bottles from Westerly, a Potter & Champlin ink and a J.H. Potter medicine.  Now if I could just find a slightly older E.G. Champlin…

A fellow club member recently came across a rash of Douglas Ave. Bottling Co. North Providence, RI soda bottles.  One of them was this unlisted handmade crown top example.

While on a recent trip to the Stillwater Antique Center, I was surprised to see a reasonably priced RI seltzer bottle.  A lot of dealers ask exorbitant prices for them, and of course you come back to the same shop five years later, they are still there.  I was happy to pick up my first Turbitt & Orme Providcence, RI seltzer for a very fair $10.

Otis Collection pt.6

Welcome (and for some, welcome back!).  This week I will keep plugging away at bottles from the Otis collection.  I’ll start with an ABM crown top soda, B. Colantonio Dean St. Providence, RI.  There are bottles from DePasquale & Colantonio from the same address, so it appears DePasquale left and Colantonio continued the business.

A plain but noteworthy soda is embossed Nasonville Bottling Co. on the heel.  While it doesn't grab one's attention, Nasonville variants are pretty hard to come by, and this is one of the newest ones I’ve seen with a date code for 1918.

It was only a matter of time before I ran into another unlisted Palmer & Madigan Importers Providence, RI.  This half pint is unlisted in this embossing version.

I have a couple of Fisk & Co. medicine bottles from Pawtucket.  I was rather pleased to see a Fisk & Co. 200 Main St. Pawtucket, RI (in script) in an unlisted larger size (6-1/4”).  It is one of the less-common bottles from this prolific company.

Another nice medicine was a Helmer Drug Co. 3 Stores Providence, R.I.  There is no recorded Helmer bottle with 3 Stores embossed, and it’s the only RI bottles with that kind of embossing to my knowledge.  The sides and back consist of 13 panels in a rectangular shape, which is also a less common shape.

Spring Finds #1

Many years ago I dug a small farm dump near my house.  It was certainly a sad dig through many rocks and shards of pontils and nicely colored fragments.  One of the few whole bottles was a mysterious one.  It was marked Antiseptic / Sure Cure on the sides and had a WHS monogram on the front.  I tried to research it a few years ago with little success.  I was quite surprised when digging at a farm dump the next property over (more recently), I found another one!  I renewed my search which again proved fruitless.  The mystery was finally solved by medicine bottle expert Matt Knapp, who was able to track down an old advertisement for William H. Sheldon’s Antiseptic Sure Cure, which was sold by Oliver Johnson & Co. of Providence, RI.  I’m still at a loss at the odds of finding two unlisted RI cure bottles within a few months! 

I was happy to see a Wm. K. Reynolds Providence, RI pharmacy bottle show up on ebay.  It has a neat design on the front, and when I found that it was an unlisted “ size, it was even better!

Out of all the Rhode Island beverage companies out there, I think I have the most diverse assortment of bottles from the Standard Bottling Co. of Pawtucket, RI.  I have a small army of blob and crown top sodas from them, and a few uncommon examples.  They include an etched amber beer bottle, a seltzer, and now an etched wine bottle.  Most etched wines are fairly simple in design, so to see the company’s American flag trademark on the front makes it stand out from the crowd.

Ok, after a small break I’m back to more Otis collection bottles.  A nice Joseph Demers Pawtucket, RI blob had an unfamiliar look to it.  It turns out to be my first example with "and" embossed between the address numbers.  The period after Joseph also made it unlisted.

When it came to bottling in Rhode Island, the name McKenna was a prominent one.  From the prolific McKenna brothers to McKenna & Conaty, and lastly McKenna & Nolan Providence, RI.  This was certainly the least prosperous partnership between one of the McKennas and James P. Nolan.  It is first mentioned in 1903.  In 1911 they created their own baseball team.  They disbanded by 1913, but Mr. Nolan continued bottling by himself at the same location.

"Not Quite Mine" pt. 2

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.  

What Makes a Bottle Unlisted?

After adding my last post, I realized I had never really explained the story behind these unlisted bottles.  It is a topic worthy of discussion, so here is a quickly assembled but hopefully helpful explanation of how a bottle is qualified as unlisted.

Rhode Island is one of the only states that collectors have attempted to document all of the known bottles from (excluding milks and ACL sodas).  Even as the smallest state, this proved a monumental task, and since work began in the 1970s, new bottles are still being found every month.
When collectors first began cataloging RI bottles, a fairly simple record was kept.  The embossing was taken down, the size, shape, and color was recorded.
As the years progressed, it became clear that more details were needed.  When a rectangular medicine bottle from one company came in four different rectangular shapes, the description of the shape needed to be more detailed.  Punctuation also needed more scrutiny.  Rather than implying that it was correct, one had to carefully check every comma and period.  There are many old listings online that might actually be the same exact bottle as the next one in the list.  The only way to know for certain is to find that bottle in the flesh or track down the person who owned it when it was cataloged. 
The Antique Bottles of Rhode Island book has not been updated in many years, so when one visits our webpage you will find the amount of bottles listed has nearly doubled since the book was published.  Even with this increase, I still have a couple hundred bottles that are unlisted.  For example, there is only one Augustin Vitale blob top soda listed online.  You could imagine my surprise when I kept finding variants until I had a total of six different versions.  There are also certain types of bottles that have been neglected, which mainly includes ACL sodas and seltzer bottles.  Last I checked, I think five ACL sodas had made their way onto the LRBC website.  However, there are close to 100 RI ACL sodas out there.  The same goes for seltzer bottles. 
Now, are these unlisted versions rare?  Generally, they are no rarer than a similar listed bottle from the same company.  Quite often size variations, particularly in soda and beer bottles, do not quality for unlisted status.  Quite often the height of a hand-tooled blob top could vary by as much as 1/2" depending on who fashioned the lip.  Medicine bottles are a little more precise.  Usually a >1/4" difference in height can mean it is unlisted.  It never hurts, though, to compare the bottle in question next to a listed bottle of nearly identical height. 
All of the embossing variants of blob and crown top soda bottles were often out of the bottler's hands.  The glass companies often used whatever molds they had, so required terms like Registered could have been embossed on the upper/lower shoulder, below the slugplate, on the rear shoulder, or on the rear heel, depending on the mold.  The engravers making the slug plates often had differing skills in spelling and punctuation, hence many subtle variations.

Now all of this can get quite tedious, even for an advanced collector like me.  By far my favorite type of unlisted bottle is one that is completely unknown.  This would be a bottle from a company no one has heard of before.  There are two main categories of these "brand new" finds.  The first is a bottle that is clearly marked from RI.  For example when I dug a Leonard's Electric Pain Lotion Providence, RI, I was very excited.  No one had previously documented a Dr. Leonard, and to sell a product like this in the 1800s one needed to issue a patent. 
The other, more difficult to identify category are bottles that are not marked from RI.  Often times you need to do a lot of research or find a labeled example to confirm it is from RI.  For example, I had a Quick Stop for Headaches embossed medicine bottle in my collection.  While it was neat, I had no idea where it was from.  While I was researching the name, I came across an advertisement for Mattison's Quick Stop for Headaches Providence, RI.  E.F. Mattison was a patent medicine manufacturer, and this happened to be his most successful product.


I hope that explains a lot, and didn't put you to sleep!  If you have any questions feel free to contact me.  Also, if you have a RI bottle that is not listed online or in this blog, I would be most grateful if you could send me a picture of it.  Thanks again for reading!
-RIbottleguy