Posted 9 years ago
AnnaB
(85 items)
This is my collection of small to medium-small bottles (sans purple and cobalt blue ones i posted earlier) that i've accumulated over years from all over the place. A quarter of them was actually found right on my property. In spring when the snow melts away i always find pieces of old pottery and glass around our yard, but sometimes whole items turn out, too. Nothing terribly old and special, but still pleasant finds.
The bottle on the pic 4 is the most recent find, and it has peculiar damage i'm puzzled over . It was found in a mid-century dump near my neighbor's property. Over many years various containers with toxic waste and household trash were thrown there. There was a strong chemical smell right in the dump area although it's at least 30-40 years old. I'm thinking maybe the bottle glass melted/warped under high temperature of some spilled chemical...any ideas?
The green one, the ink, the mini strap-side bottle (never seen one so small) are likely your best.
To clarify what a strap-side is....
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-YxvZgxFzLPA/ViqUEe3JMsI/AAAAAAAAZTE/Sbu2Vpt8a3g/w291-h576-no/Shelby%2BDruggist%2B021.JPG
A labeled example, Beef Iron and Wine (common medicine that actually did as said to over time.) The "strap" on the side of the "flask" makes it a strap-side, which is common for whisky bottles and some medicines.
Essentially, anything with a good amount of embossing or different than usual is a good bottle to bring back (cheap;) screw-tops are usually not as interesting to collectors, albeit some specialise in them. *Has 1 on display.*
The Campa..... looks like a shoe-polish bottle. The one in front (if front is moving to right) of the strap-side looks like a perfume. The Hires bottle is common. Here is an 1890s ad to the company:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Zd10V1J9Kno/VkzbFG-bKaI/AAAAAAAAcSQ/cs9SM9V2Obs/w433-h577-no/Old%2BJournals%2B057.JPG
Piso Cures (if that's the green one) are kind of common, but is the bottle behind that (if behind is to left) embossed?
Your warped bottle likely was thrown into a fire, or a fire thrown onto it, that was meant to burn up much refuse for compaction and ''cleanliness." It was common to burn trash (before we had trash service, we did too) and bury it. (Yes, even today Americans in the city still don't have trash-service.)
I despair when I see melted glass in dumps-- most often means, "Everything's gonna be damaged."
Looks like your lot is circa-1905 to 1960s.
Hi Spirit...wow, i didn't expect you'd go over almost each of them in detail... i would arrange them in a row and number them for you (*already planning to re-take a picture over the weekend* =)
Thank you for the expansive and helpful info on this lot!
Screw-tops -almost all of them were found on my property- for free!- except the small brown bottle with a white cap. That's a Soviet-era Iodine bottle and I don't remember how i got it. The clear bottle with an off-white cap has "Lilly" written on it.
The bottle next to Piso on the left is embossed but i'll have to look at it to see what it says.
Thank you for an insight on handling of dumps back in the day. I don't know for sure if this was the case with this particular dump because i also found a large-size cobalt blue bottle there that day, completely intact, as well as other bottles and jars, whole and broken. Maybe it was burned some place else and then thrown into that dump? We'll never know, but your theory does explain what might have happened to the bottle.
Thank you everyone for your loves and stopping by! I really appreciate it.
I respond about what I know/see. :P
My own screw-top is one I also dug.
Interestingly, you can dig paper-label bottles from the ground. Up here in Michigan, what's left is almost nothing, but I dug up one for a flavoring called Banamyl (or something like that,) and another for what I think was a beer-- both 100 years old with some words still readable, the Banamyl only about an inch under the packed dirt. LOL. Another time, I dug up 1940s liquor bottles-- 3 had the state seal left, which was just a sticker.
All I know about a brand called Lilly is that the most commonly seen poison bottles with intact paper labels are Lilly brand (Lovely name for a toxic product, eh?)
The burning could have been done at the house, as back then they used metal cans for trash; and often only parts got burned. No use wasting fuel to try and "burn" tin cans and glass. Further, most glass can withstand higher temps to a certain degree.
I could have went onto detail on other bottles, but I believe I already covered the amber elsewhere and wasn't sure on how to describe location accurately for a few-- like the narrow, small phial, which would have likely been for pills.
Yet these phials held opium or some liquid, not as likely to be solid tablets:
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-egpYijpY1DA/VcJK8cfLASI/AAAAAAAARSE/fhAYWHYJ5D8/w769-h577-no/Taped%2Bon%2Blabel%2B038.JPG
I have seen phials like the one I'm referring to, though, in an area of broken needles-- leading me to believe that now days similar phials hold injectable drugs.
Spirit, thank you for such a detailed and informative reply- as usual =)) Sorry i haven't been responding sooner, going through some major changes at work and will be sporadically on and off line for some time.
Don't over-work yourself, and good luck.
Thank you! :-)