Rarely Seen "Ping" Out

I'm not sure if the bottle community at large has an official term for it, but the local community calls it a ping- or peen-out. What I mean is that there was other embossing in the metal mould, but the glass house took a ball-peen hammer and pounded out the old words to reuse the mould for someone else.

The oval/round circle, often incorrectly called a 'slug plate', where the main embossing is is known as a plate-mould. Plate-moulds were cheaper as you could get a standard mould and have your own personalised interchangeable plate instead of paying for a privately cut mould used only for you. As such, various bottlers would often have their bottles done in the same mould with a different plate.

I was able to read what was above the plate on the old mould. It turns out it said, ALEX SAMPLE. I'm not sure who Alex was, but it may have been a sample bottle size/shape/style with its own plate mould that would have told you the Hutch patent or something for a potential customer named Alex. That is just guessing.

In the end, that mould was still good, so they hammered it out and changed out the plate to make this. This particular Hutch comes in two known variants. This one was already listed as scarce. But the listed variant did not mention or show the peen-out, which likely made this a very unique Hutchinson from The Double Eagle Bottling Co. It also has on the back a stretched out shallow open bubble.

Circa 1900 is my guess on it.

A very welcome addition from a road trip that hadn't gone too well for most of it earlier this week.