Posted 7 years ago
SpiritBear
(813 items)
Here are some druggist ads from 1873 and 1878 Muskegon, Michigan. I still don't have a Sibley bottle, but I do have a Wilson, a Brundage, and a Bennett bottle in my collection. Sibley was a very early druggist, and I've seen only one example-- damaged, sadly, so I passed it up when I had the chance to obtain it.
The first ad had stickers, stamps, and writing from the 1957-2013 on it as it was being housed in the local library. I couldn't believe they ruined it. I have digitally enhanced its image to try and blot out their transgressions, but if you look closely you can still see where some damage was. These ones were in the middle of the directory book and thus escaped destruction.
The first book has gorgeous cobalt blue panels with gold debossed designs/words advertising even more companies.
Early Druggests! You can get medicine and wall paper by the TON!!
Well, that tops Walgreens!!
I commented that to a friend-- how I marveled at buying it by the ton. I can can't feign imagine it.
I'm intrigued also by how the same mortar and pestle graphic appears in three of the four ads, and how the formatting has remained essentially unchanged.
I'd point out that the "wall paper by the ton" is sold by a Bookseller and Stationer, Mr. Baker, not Mr. Wilson, the druggist whose ad appears above Mr Baker's.
Each page was printed by the same publisher here, which would have had only one graphic of the mortar and pestle for the block. As they're engraved into copper or steel, they last for a very long time so long as you don't apply too much pressure. It's the rubber that deforms in our modern print-blocks (a bit after this point my laptop crashed, in which I restarted and clicked 'restore pages' on Google's pop-up, and miraculously it remembered much of what I had typed!).
Main difference is the type of paper.
Yup. Shame this wasn't the book-binder's ad, for Henry made a binder's pun: "I'm Bound to Please."