Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Group of Bottle Finds From a Recent Hunt. |
I went out for a bottle hunt. I found the bottles shown above .I didn't think I did very well, but after getting back and cleaning them some I could see there were some that were kind of interesting. As you can see in the above photo, the bottles still have dirt on them and some shells, but I could see them much better than before.
The broken green bottle on the top shelf is an unusual green color that I've never seen on old glass. One edge is embossed ...ZELTINE & CO. I think it was a Piso's Hazeltine bottle, which would have been nice if not broken. The green color was so striking that I picked it up. You usually don't see glass that color.
This next bottle (below) is an old blown bottle with numerous bubbles. You can see how the bottom has an uneven thickness.
Old blown bottles are generally thicker and not of uniform thickness. That is one way you can tell an old bottle even if it has no embossing or other clues.
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| Old Blue Jar. |
This is a common color for old bottle glass.
"ARRESTED FOR MANSLAUGHTER; OFFICERS OF THE COSTAR COMPANY IN JAIL IN YONKERS. Two Children Died After Eating Rat Exterminator
YONKERS, N.Y., Nov. 15 -- Gilbert L. Richardson. President, and Michael Kelley, Vice President, of the Costar Company, 34 Clinton Place, New-York City, were arrested to-night and locked up on a charge of manslaughter. They are held without bail. The arrests were made by order of Coroner Miles."
Mary Linehan, 4 years of age, fed her 2 year old brother Michael Linehan a spoonful of rat exterminator and then took some herself. The Coroner's report cited that "The label on the box read Costar's Rat and Roach Exterminator. Non-poisonous. No danger in using."
That bottle looks old and is probably the oldest I picked up that day.
The tall aqua bottle (middle bottle, bottom row) has no marks on it. It is obviously an older bottle, but I don't know what it held.
Embossed on the shoulder: FEDERAL LAW FORBIDS RESALE OR RE-USE OF THIS BOTTLE.
The tropics are becoming more active, but the Treasure Coast surf is almost flat.
The bottle, or jar, has COSTAR embossed across the bottom in big but faint letters. One person on a bottle forum thought a similar bottle was an ink bottle, and another person thought it was rat or pest poison, which I don't think is likely because of the lack of any other markings typical of poison bottles.
COSTAR is not a maker's mark listed on SHA. I think it might be the company or product name. There are some other faint letters on the bottom, which I think might be TAE or TAR. Not all of the last letter is clear.
Digging deeper into this one, it is possible this jar held a rat poison. Here is an 1850s newspaper article someone on antique-bottles.net found.
"ARRESTED FOR MANSLAUGHTER; OFFICERS OF THE COSTAR COMPANY IN JAIL IN YONKERS. Two Children Died After Eating Rat Exterminator
YONKERS, N.Y., Nov. 15 -- Gilbert L. Richardson. President, and Michael Kelley, Vice President, of the Costar Company, 34 Clinton Place, New-York City, were arrested to-night and locked up on a charge of manslaughter. They are held without bail. The arrests were made by order of Coroner Miles."
Mary Linehan, 4 years of age, fed her 2 year old brother Michael Linehan a spoonful of rat exterminator and then took some herself. The Coroner's report cited that "The label on the box read Costar's Rat and Roach Exterminator. Non-poisonous. No danger in using."
The HERBEX bottle (shown below) is a screw-top bottle and not very interesting other than the embossing.
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| HERBEX Bottle. |
On the bottom is embossed "6 OZ CAP." So the cap could have been for dosage. Also, it has an elongated diamond mark on the bottom that was indicates the Diamond Glass Co.
Herbex is a product name you can still find all over the internet.
The tall aqua bottle (middle bottle, bottom row) has no marks on it. It is obviously an older bottle, but I don't know what it held.
Now for the clear whiskey bottle (far left, top row). Below is a bigger picture of a that bottle after a little cleaning.
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Embossed on the shoulder: FEDERAL LAW FORBIDS RESALE OR RE-USE OF THIS BOTTLE.
On the heal: BOTTLE MADE IN UNITED KINGDOM.
On the bottom: WM TEAHER & SONS LTD.
This is not a really old bottle, but for me an interesting one.
(The oldest bottle I saw on that hunt, I didn't keep because the blob top lip on the beer bottle was badly damaged. Too bad.)
Below is what I found about the Wm. Teacher & Sons company.
A family-owned company until its takeover in 1976, William Teacher & Sons started out as a large chain of ‘dram shops’ in Glasgow before becoming a distiller and blender supplying whiskies worldwide...
In 1851 the company moved into the wholesale wine and spirits market, opening a warehouse in Argyll Street in Glasgow, and started creating bespoke blends to its customers’ individual requirements.
Teacher died in 1876, the same year his youngest daughter Agnes married Walter Bergius, bringing the other controlling family name into the company. In 1884, the company registered a brand name for its most popular whisky blend, Teacher’s Highland Cream, and also opened an office in London. A second office in Manchester followed in 1886. A year later, the company expanded its export markets and also began shipping mature barrels of whisky to Australia and back, believing the long sea voyage added complexity to the ‘Australian bonded’ brand. This practice continued until sea freight costs became prohibitively expensive in the 1920s...
Here is the link for more about that company.
If you can date it for me, let me know.
I just posted the Wm. Teacher bottle on my tgbottlebarn.blogspot.com site.
I haven't done much research on these bottles yet.
There are a couple more I'll photograph some other time.
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Looks like the system coming off of Africa will go into the Gulf, but it bears watching.
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| Source: nhc.noaa.gov |
Good hunting,
TreausreGuide@comcast.net