April 1999 Questions
©1999 Digger Odell Publications
Dear Sir, I am trying to identify and date a bottle which I acquired. The description is: Amber color Height: 3-7/8" Diameter: 1-3/4" Around the neck, just before it narrows, is Lysol, written in script and repeated four times. The bottom has around the outer portion, LYSOL INCORPORATED BLOOMFIELD, N.J. Around the bottom in a circle inside the above, BOTTLE MADE IN U.S.A In the center of the bottom is maker mark (?) which looks like a letter H with an A inside the bottom of the H. Directly below that is a 6 (?) The cap is cork (I believe). Centered on the top of the cap is Lysol, again written in script. Around the outer circle of the cap is Lysol Incorporated Bloomfield N.J. Any help you could offer would be appreciated. Thank you, Joe King
Joe, your bottle
is very common and dates to the begin of the century. According
to the advertisement it came in three sizes. Value of this bottle
is $1-2. It was a disinfectant.
Digger
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Digger, Recently I bought a bottle at a roadside antique store. It is light green and thick glass with some bubbles. On the bottom there is a raised impression of a devil with the word (also raised) PLUTO under the devil figure. Any ideas what it is, value, etc. The store owner said he found it in Alabama. Any help you could give would be greatly appreciated. Jenny
Jenny, You have a "Pluto
Water" mineral water bottle. This bottle was put out by the
French Lick Springs Hotel Company, a corporation of French Lick,
Indiana. They were fined $50 in 1909 by the Food and Drug
Administration for false advertising and under filling their
bottles. The label claimed the bottle held a quart but it
actually held only 1.6 pints. the bottle comes in at least two
sizes. Company also ran a resort on the property where people,
believing the mineral water would have health benefits would both
drink it and bathe in it. In 1905, the Pluto Water was advertised
in Druggist magazines as being available from Henry Drug Company,
Louisville, Ky. It changed hands sometime before 1911 to the
French Lick Hotel. It was under their management that it became a
widely used product. The bottles are quite common. It comes in a
pint and a quart size, but you'd better check the actual
capacity. Value is $2-4.
Digger
 |
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Dear sir,
I just read that no one collects old Clorox and other old product
bottles; Could I ask why? Wouldn't the company possibly want
them? I also have some old bottles that I found in the
woods back in the 60's. They have no names on them. They are like
bottles which contained syrup and seem to have been sealed with a
cork? Would anyone be interested in these? They were found by the
edge of a powerline cut, and it was built in the early 20-30's or
so. Should I bring them to a bottle collector? and if yes, do you
know of any in Connecticut?
Thank you for your time....Just a beginner, Paul Carrier
Paul,
You'll probably find Clorox bottles for sale at nearly every
Antique mall you stop in. You might even find them priced from
$2-10. Pretty much no one collects Clorox bottles because the
supply is simply too large. Literally millions of them were made
annually for 20-30 years. A second reason is that bottles of this
era are machine made and have little variation. Each one is
exactly like the next one. On the other hand, hand blown bottles
have many unique features which collectors find attractive, some
have bubbles, others have stretch marks on the necks, some have
gloppy crudely applied lips while others may have comparatively
thick or thin areas. The fact of having been created at least
partly by hand means: 1) each has certain unique features;
2)comparatively fewer were made because of the limitation of
production by hand methods.
Most bottles made after 1900 have little embossing. collectors
like the addition of embossing, which enhances the value. I'd
suggest reading the article on this web site about determining values for more information. As for interest in such bottles,
it is usually beginning colectors who purchase them. Wanna learn
more? Wanna find out about collectors in your area? Sign up for
the Antique Bottle and Glass Collector Magazine. Jim Hagenbuch,
publisher, will send you a copy for a couple bucks and you can
see what you've been missing. Click on the links
section of this web site to get there.
Here is a site which will tell you the history of the Clorox
Bottles.
http://www.clorox.com/company/history/
Digger.
Hi, I just found a small
medicine bottle washed up on a beach in Ontario, Canada, and was
looking for any info, ie- age,value. The embossed words that run
up the side are: MURINE EYE REMEDY CHICAGO.U.S.A.
The bottle is clear, 3 1/2" tall, 2 5/8" around, the
neck is 2" around and 1 1/4 long (including slightly flared
lip). The top of neck is flat, the base is smooth, slightly
concave with the number 3 embossed on it. The bottle
appears to be Blown In Mold. The bottle is corked, empty
except for a toothpick. The majority of he cork is
intact. There is one blister shaped air bubble on the
side. The bottle is almost blemish free except for the lip
which has a few small chips and one large one (about 30% of top
of lip affected). Any info would be greatly appreciated.
Thank You!
Harvey
The Murine Eye Remedy Company began in
the 1890s in Chicago. They sold the remedy in a trial size for 25
cents standard size for 50 cents, a dollar size, and in 1912 they
were offering a "tourist-autoist," in a leather case
and a dozen or so other products. the bottles are fairly common
and sell for $3-5. The ad below is from the November, 1912, Druggist
Curcular.
Digger
 |
Dear Sir,
I found a bottle many years ago , and have
taken it to many bottle shops over the years, all over the
southeast, and can not find anyone who has ever heard of ,or seen
such a bottle. It would be greatly appreciated if you could shed
some light on the history of this bottle. In raised letters it
has " SEA GULL BAKING POWDER
' around the top in capital letters. It is 4 1/2 inches
tall and 2 7/8 inches in diameter. It's
opening is 9/16 inch and made for a
cork ( the hole is in a raised section about
3/4" round and 3/4" high. It is a pale blue
color. On the bottom is a " 21 " and the words
" THE POTTER PARLIN CO "
Thank you very much for your time,
Sincerely, Lee
Sanders
Lee,
Your bottle is listed in Zumwalt's Book, Ketchup
Pickles Sauces, She describes your bottle as aqua,
4 3/4" x 2 3/8", listed as common and with a value of
$1-2. Ellis M. Potter and Anrew J. Parlin, operated the Globe
Spice Mills at 54 Main St. in Cincinnati, Ohio, listed in 1882.
They filed for a trademark for baking powder in March of 1885 and
were still producing the Baking Powder in 1894.
Digger
| Hello, I found a bottle in a lake
nearby. The bottle is light blue in color and says
"Citrate of Magnesia" on it, there are 3
flanges at the top. If you know the value of the bottle
and/or how old it is, please let me know. Thanks for your time 8)8) Citrate
of Magnesia bottles are often easy to recognize. They are
almost always round, are about one pint in capacity,and
have very unique style of applied top. Often these
bottles will have the words "CITRATE OF
MAGNESIA,"embossed other times they will
not as shown in the picture (The ones in the picture date
in 1860-1870 period). Bottles with applied tops will be
more crudely made and older than those with tooled lips,
which while still hand made, were shaped with a lipping
tools. |
 |
Hi,
Was wondering if you know of any historical aspects such as
location of business and time period of selling Red Cross
Trademark medicine bottles..I know of 6 sizes-
2",3",4",5 1/4",6 1/2" & 10
3/4" all clear/SCA Do you know of any other
sizes or colors I find these bottles very interesting, not as
valuable as some others I collect but the size variations are
incredible.
Tracking down this
company might be a bit difficult. It seems that more than one
company was using the words "Red Cross" to make
medicines. The first mention I found was in the 1888
Robert Stevenson Whole Druggist Catalog, which lists a
"Red Cross Cough Drops". I
found a listing for "Red Cross Laxative Bitters",
C.C. Kosher, East St. Louis, Missouri; another was
"Red Cross Mineral Water Company, "of Big
Rapids Mich. circa 1905 they also produced a headache cure. then
there was the "Red Cross Chill Tonic,"
produced by the Pfeiffer Mfg. Co., St Louis, Missouri,
circa 1905; Johnson & Johnson
of New Brunswick, NJ produced a "Red Cross Kidney
Plaster,"; A disinfectant and deodorizer was bottled
and sold by the "Red Cross Chemical Co.," in
Boston, Ma., circa 1905; There was a "Red Cross Remedy
Co." in Pine Hill, N.Y. Circa 1905. Believe it or not
the list goes on..but for lack of time and space, I cannot list
them all. If I had to guess, I'd guess the Red Cross Chemcial
Co..
Digger
| Sir: Many years ago my Dad and I found an old dump in the woods in Southern Ct. In the dump were many bottles (mostly milk). One of the bottles was more interesting to me: It is a lightish green with a ship on the back and an eagle on the front. Under the eagle were the words "TWD." Recently, I did some research into this bottle. As you are probably aware, the bottle is quite famous. It was (if not a fake) made around 1822 by the bottle maker Thomas W. Doyette. The ship on the back is the U.S.S. Franklin. In my research, I was somewhat disheartened to find that this bottle had been replicated many times in the past. For example, the bottles were reproduced later in the 19th century and Lestoil produced many such bottles in the 1960s. How do I know whether the bottle is a fake? I do not think that it is one of the Lestoil bottles for 2 reasons. First, we found the bottle in a dump with many older bottles. It seems too coincidental to me that someone would have tossed a Lestoil reproduction into this dump, which just happened to have a lot of other old bottles. Second, according to the book I read, the Lestoil bottles were produced in 4 colors ( I forget which they were) but the colors were not the light greenish color that of my bottle. But the book did point out that some of these colors were blended by Lestoil. I would appreciate any assistance that you could provide. Wes Phillips |
 |
Wes, Your question is a good one. I agree that is is unlikely to find a reproduction of an old bottle in an old dump. Yes, the Lestoil Company did reproduce this flask, but it looks very dissimilar to the original in many respects. the lip treatment is completely different from the original, which has a plain sheared lip. The base is very different, the original having a pontil mark and the repro the number "7" embossed on the base. Like you mentioned the color, Lestoil made them in blue, amythyst and clear. An original, will probably have a degree of wear on the base, a pontil mark (sharp glass where the pontil rod was broken off). The original has 25 rays above the eagle, 8 vertical bars on the shield. End of olive branch extends into the oval frame with an inner band of 23 small pearls. I could find no other reference to this bottle being reproduced. Digger.
| Hi, I found a bottle recently that is
about 10 inches in height. Its a rectangular bottle and
on the side it says ' Cod Liver Oil ' on the opposite
side it says ' with lime & soda ' and on the front it
says 'Scotts Emulsion' .. this bottle is light green/blue
in color. A cork type top is present also. Value and more
info would be appreciated. Mechelle Your bottle is a product of
Alfred B. Scott & Samuel W. Browne, who began to
manufacture Scott's Emulsion around 1876 in NYC. The
famous man carrying a fish was their trademark and logo
and was embossed on the bottle beginning in the 1890s.
Your bottle probably dates between 1876 and 1890. By 1915
they had grown tremendously and had moved their business
to New Jersey. The product was a very popular one and so
the bottles are quite common and can easily be found for
$3-5, slightly more with the embossed trademark. |
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