Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| INNISBAWN WHISKEY Bottle. |
This green bottle is embossed as follows.
Front shoulder: OLD INNISBAWN.
Middle front: WHISKEY.
Bottom frront; BOYD and Co.
Distillers
BELFAST.
Back shoulder: IMPERIAL PINT.
Bottom: J L and Co.
There are a couple more marks on the bottom after J L and Co., which I couldn't decipher for sure. There are several sizable bubbles in the glass.
On the internet I found many examples of ads from Boyd and Co. Below is one.
Here is some information I found.
For about a decade Samuel Wilson Boyd (1860-1932) was Chairman of The Old Bushmills Distillery Company having been the founder and owner of Boyd & Co. Distillers, Belfast. Born in Belfast, his latter years were lived at Fairbourne, Fortwilliam Park in Belfast. He was a member and 'liberal subscriber' at Fortwilliam Presbyterian Church (which closed its doors in 2018).
His first job was with the Belfast spirits firm Mitchell & Co, who also had interests in Glasgow. Their founder, William Charles Mitchell, was born in Glasgow in 1834 but came to Belfast in the 1860s to manage the 'crowned king' of Ireland's distilleries, Dunville & Co.. Mitchell was a founder of the St Andrew's Society in Belfast.
Around 1902 Boyd bought Thomas Quinn & Co of Hill Street, which later became Boyd & Co. He was chairman of the Ulster Anti-Prohibition Council and also of the Distillers and Wholesale Wine and Spirit Merchants Association.
From that I would guess the bottle shown above would have been manufactured between 1902 and 1932.
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I had that bottle for a while, and just rediscovered it. I forgot about it and now have no idea when it was found. I have a good idea where it was found. A couple mistakes I keep running into and mentioning is not documenting finds well and storing them in an organized way.
If you metal detect long enough, you might go through a bit of an evolution. You might begin by looking for things that are worth money and eventually wind up being more interested in what finds tell you. 'Some might, rightly or wrongly, describe that transformation as starting as a treasure hunter and becoming more of an amateur archaeologist. That characterization is a simplification and is unfair to many who describe themselves as treasure hunters, but I can't get into the fine points of those defintions now. But you might go from being primarily interested in the value of finds to being more interested in the story behind the finds. Of course, you can be interested in both, but you might find that over time you become less interested in the economics and more interested in other things. Today with social media, attention is something that many seek.
Here is a brief paragraph that I'll use to comment on how some might change as detectorists over time.
Excavation often seems to the general public the main and certainly the most glamorous aspect of archaeology; but fieldwork and excavation represent only a part of the archaeologist’s work. The other part is the interpretation in cultural and historical contexts of the facts established—by chance, by fieldwork, and by digging—about the material remains of man's past... (Source: archaeology - Interpretation | Britannica)
When you begin metal detecting your focus will be on finding things. That is obvious enough. You have to find something before you can interpret it. But after you have accumulated a lot of things and at the same time have accumulated more experience and information, you might find that you begin to spend more time on interpretation. You dig into the stories as much as you dig into the earth. And when you do that, you discover that you might discover that you did not pay enough attention to some of the details of your finds. You might discover that you should have documented more so that you have the information years later. You will also want to organize finds so you can easily find them again. That in itself can become a problem.
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There is no activity on the Atlantic National Hurricane Center map this morning.
The surf is about three or four feet, but the tides are small.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net