Written by the Treasureguide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Silver Palace Pharmacy Bottle Found Sunday. |
I recently showed some bottles that I dug on the Indian River Ridge site, but horse-choking mobs of voracious mosquitos chased me off that site this morning, so I decided to take a little walk and see if there were any bottles that would greet me as eagerly as those mosquitos.
The bottles weren't nearly as aggressive as the mosquitos, but a few older ones did peak out enough to catch my attention.
The first I picked up and didn't see much on it, so I quickly pocketed it. At first I didn't notice anything other than the stopper-top, which suggested a little age.
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| Stoneware Master Ink Bottle circa 1890 |
I really like stoneware, but seldom find any. Maybe that is one reason I like it.
This is the second bottle of this type that I've found. I found the other one nearly ten years ago. They were found far apart, but bear exactly the same debossing.
Here is what I wrote about the first one in a 2011 post.
After a little quick research I found that the name "J. Bourne and Son" was used first in 1850. I found that a bottle of this type would probably be from 1850-1880.
It is a master ink bottle. There are many varieties. This one, unlike some that I've seen, has a pouring spout.
They come in different sizes. You saw that if you went to the Odyssey Marine virtual museum. A lot of these bottles were found on the S. S. Republic.
It seems the British ink companies almost ran the American ink companies out of business in those days.
Here are the two I've found together. The one that I found Sunday is the smaller one on the left.
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| Two Found Stoneware Master Ink Bottles. |
They both read as follows:
VITREOUS STONE BOTTLES.
J. BOURNE AND SON
PATENT REG.
DENBY POTTERY
NEAR DERBY
P. AND J. ARNOLD,
LONDON
ENGLAND.
The bottle shown at the top of this post is interesting too, once you can read the embossing.
It reads:
THE SILVER PALACE PHARMACY
PRESCRIPTIONISTS
FORT PIERCE, FLA.
I soaked it in white vinegar for a couple hours and then brushed it a little to get the barnical residue off. That worked well, as I suspected it would. I didn't clean the inside of that bottle yet, but below is the picture of the cleaned bottle.
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| Partially Cleaned Silver Palace Pharmacy Bottle. |
I always like to find some Treasure Coast history, and this bottle is definitely that.
Actually all three are. All of them ended up on the Treasure Coast. They got here somehow and were probably used here.
One bottle came form London and the other apparently has Philadelphia connections. How did they get here? That gets into transportation and how the locals got their supplies. It shows how connected the Treasure Coast was.
From what I've found on the internet, the Silver Palace Pharmacy was formed in 1927 and operated for some time at 2nd and Orange in Fort Pierce. It became an inactive corporation in about 1965.
I eventually noticed that the first bottle that I pocketed was also enmbossed.
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| Boericke and Tafel Embossed Bottle. |
Here is what I found about Boerickand Tafel. The entire history is online.
In 1850, the 18-year-old Rudolph Tafel met Francis Edmund Boericke, and invited Boericke to assist in some English to German translating. By 1853 they opened a small bookstore, specializing in Swedenborgian literature, at 24 S. 5th in Philadelphia. Upon the suggestion of Constantine Hering, they began to manufacture and sell homeopathic remedies. Within six months of the formation of the partnership, Rudolph Tafel left to assume a teaching position at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
Boericke kept the small book store, enlisting Rudolph's brother, A. J. Tafel, as an apprentice. In 1855, Tafel left for the west.
In 1857 Boericke entered the Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania, but kept his pharmacy operating. In 1862, William Radde, Jr. died, and Boericke bought the Radde pharmacy and kept it running. A. J. Tafel had returned to Philadelphia, and Boericke sold him the pharmacy at 48 N. 9th Street in 1863, keeping the Radde Pharmacy at 635 Arch St. Boericke graduated with his MD degree in 1863.
Here is a link for more about Boericke and Tafel.
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Some people think the cache reported on Twitter that I posted yesterday is fake. Definitely could be.
So much of what you see these days is fake, whether it is on TV or the internet. It is difficult to get the real story. I've talked about that a lot before and won't get into that again.
Some people thought the cache looked "staged." I'm sure it was to some extent.
You might not realize how much effort went in to showing the bottles I posted today. First there was some cleaning so you could see something. I wiped some of the barnacles and seaweed off for the first photo even though it still has a lot on it. Then I try to get some good lighting so you can see the item well. That isn't as easy as it might seem. You move it around until it shows well. When taking a photo of glass, a flash will bounce off the glass and blurr the picture, as it did in the second Silver Palace bottle photo. I let that one go because I thought it was good enough and didn't want to put any more time into it.
You usually can't show a find in its natural state. Usually it will be buried, so to show it at all takes some staging. Then the question becomes was there any real deception.
In the case of the cache I showed yesterday, some people thought it was fake. As I said it could be.
There was one time when I posted about a person who found a gold coin. One reader said there was too much sand for gold coins to be found, and they didn't believe it. They didn't know that the person who made the find was somebody that had found many gold coins that are now part of the State Collection and had no reason to anonymously falsely report a find of much less magnitude than many they had made in the past. So it can go the other way too.
Nonetheless, you must always be skeptical these days, esepcially when getting news second hand over the internet or from TV.
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The tides are big and the surf is small. That means you can do some good eye-balling
in shallow water, The tide is going out farther and the visibility is good.
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| Source: MagicSeaWeed.com. |
The surf will be higher tomorrow, but the wind will be mostly from the south.
Eye-balling is a good way to find good metal detecting sites. If you find an old bottle or shard, you have a clue that there might be some other old stuff in the area.
You don't need a metal detector to find old stuff if you take advanatage of where nature is moving sand or earth for you.
There is always some place to hunt and something to find. Adapt to conditions.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
