An early prototype Hobbleskirt Coca Cola bottle with large verticle embossing from Milwaukee came to light recently.

From time to time you come across bottles that are so unexpected, so amazing that you have to look twice. When this E. ANHEUSER CO came up I was so shocked I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

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A recent discovery of an unusual bottle in the Lake Geneva area adds an amazing footnote with a mysterious but strong Mukwonago connection.
  
Mukwonago had its own patent medicine manufacturer!  Quite a creative one too in terms of the fanciful branding of his product.  The bottle shown was recently found in an old collection of pharmacy items, and to the author, a collector of local bottles for half a century, a quite significant one.  The aqua glass bottle exhibits glass blowing technology of the late 1880’s to about 1905 and is 8 5/8” tall. 

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A newly discovered variety of a Wisconsin early 1860s smooth based medicine was dug mixed in with turn of the century bottles in Lacrosse - apparently a late throwaway. It is important because there are very few embossed medicines that are this early known from Lacrosse. The bottle was made for the Uriah Perry Jr.’s wholesale druggist business in Lacrosse, probably around 1859 or 1860.

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This quart earthenware bottle was discovered recently in Portage, Wisconsin. The bottle was made at a Portage City Pottery for Ben Atwell of Madison who put up Table Beer in the bottle. It is lead glazed and wheel turned. This is the first bottle found from Atwell who ran a retail grocery store on the corner of State and Johnson Streets who operated from 1856 to the 1860's. By 1870 he was a "Market Farmer" presumably selling produce from his farm. The bottle dates from 1859 to 1863 which are the years that the Portage City potteries operated.

When Bella Masterson went missing in the Spring of 1896 did anyone notice, or even care? Surely her family, friends or neighbors wondered. Sadly, they would never know because she simply vanished without a trace. Some seventy years later, diver Charlie Daniels found a sealed Hutchinson soda bottle neck down in a lake 35 feet under water containing a note that suggested the answer. But it would be another thirty years before another underwater discovery would confirm Bella’s fate.
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Although this unlisted quart stoneware bottle is unknown to most collectors it has been in the collection of the Kenosha Museum for many years. The stamp reads F. BUTTRFIELD MONROE and was probably made by the Charles Hermann & Co. stoneware factory in Milwaukee around 1880. Based on the bottle style it probably was used for Small Beer which was a type of non or low alchohol content brewed beverege such as Root Beer, Lemon Beer, Sarsaparilla, etc. Little is known about Mr. Butterfield. There is a Fred Butterfield listed in the 1880 Census for the City of Monroe but he lists his occupation as Dentist so he may or may not be the owner of this soda bottling operation. No other bottles, advertisements or other references have surfaced yet from F. Butterfield. More information is needed on this company.
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This bottle was part of an old collection and recently came to light. Neither the brand nor this particular bottle was previously known to collectors. A. Breslauser was a large and successful Milwaukee whiskey dealer. Many bottles and advertising shot glasses are known, as well as quite a few brands that he promoted, including:

• Old Hickory
• Graham Club
• Cheddington
• Connet
• Henry Van Erden Gin
• Kilbourn
• La Belle
• Old Chessy
• Palm
• Standard Club
• Top Cliff Gin

About 20 years ago, I was lamenting the time I had spent driving to a small, start up flea market on the Union Grove fair grounds on a nice early Sunday morning. After skimming past rows and rows of tables covered with dumpster fodder, I was startled to find a dealer putting out beer flats filled with hundreds of small old bottles of every description. Inks, perfumes, medicines, doll nursers, you name it. My arrival to this table was perfect as the boxes were just coming out of the trunk. A guy was selling a long time accumulation of small bottles, none more than 4 inches high, that had caught someone’s fancy for eye appeal, interesting labelling, with a few modern bottles mixed in. “$3 a piece!,” said the dealer. At that exorbitant price, I would have to choose carefully, but since I seemed to have a monopoly as a customer, I could take my time in making my selections. Click on the photo to read the full article.

Colby is located halfway between Green Bay and Minneapolis, near the only bend in Hwy 29. Colby is so small the "Thank you for visiting Colby" sign is painted on the backside of the "Welcome to Colby" sign - population about 1,500. The fact that a soda bottler was in business there in the early 1880's is astonishing. The bottle is a Hutchinson soda shaped like a Matthew Gravitating Stopper bottle. It is embossed MATH KRAMER COLBY WIS and WIS GLASS CO. MILW on the bottom. According to Roger Peters, Kramer bottled soda and beer between 1881 and 1883. The lip is applied. There were several other bottlers that operated there later but this is the earliest bottle known so far.

Barna recently unearthed a fantastic rare bottle from his hometown on a dig there. It is a citron colored quart beer bottle from Kenosha embosssed J. G. GOTTFREDSEN & SON BREWER KENOSHA, WIS in a slug plate with an applied lip. It appears to date from the 1870's. It has to rank as the most desirable of all known bottles from Kenosha. To a collector who specializes in Kenosha items it is a fantasy come true for Barna to dig it himself. The bottle was known to exist from a shard. This is the first intact example known to collectors.

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The J.F. Dallinger hutch from Milwaukee is relatively rare. Recently, a nearly identical variety of this bottle appeared on eBay except that it was embossed with the city of Tacoma, Washington instead of Milwaukee. Then another eBay listing appeared for the Milwaukee variety with a paper label. It was being sold by a different Tacoma area seller who was a descendant of Joseph Dallinger. The seller had a pair of Dallinger Milwaukee bottles with paper labels that had passed down in his family. They were generic stock labels without Dallinger’s name printed on them.
This article gives some background on Joseph Dallinger’s soda business which lasted just a couple of years in the Milwaukee and Tacoma.

Even by national standards, the Blossoms Badger Ale bottle is simply a fantastic example of an early American ale. It was made by Lancaster Glass Company in New York around 1849 to 1851. This article tells the story of the discovery a new Blossom’s Badger Ale variety, how it was hunted for many years and finally acquired and restored by a club member. One intact variety, one restored and some shards prove that there were at least four varieties of embossed bottles used by this large and successful brewery. It seems likely that there are still others waiting to be discovered.

When this bottle was dug in Kenosha there was some speculation that it could be a Wisconsin or Illinois bottle. It seemed improbable given the color and the fact that it has the look of an 1840’s bottle. When another example turned up in Ashippun Wisconsin northwest of Milwaukee research efforts intensified but still no hard evidence was found. An article in the May-June 2014 edition of Bottles & Extras by Tod von Mechow speculated that it could be Wisconsin. Definitive proof finally surfaced in an advertisement in an obscure all-German Milwaukee newspaper. The March 1850 ad identified it as Michael Kom’s Lemon Mineral Water which he bottled on Huron Street in Milwaukee. This just might be Wisconsin’s earliest embossed bottle. Others from about the same time period include the Taylor & Bothers’ cobalt sided soda and Blossom’s Badger black glass ale. Click on the photo to read the full article.

An eBay listing for a one-of-a-kind early aqua pony Weiss beer bottle from the Jacob Muth brewery in Burlington, Wisconsin. Jacob Muth was in business in Burlington from 1852 to 1872. This bottle appears to date from the 1860’s which is notable because it is the first glass beer bottle from that time period from Wisconsin known to collectors. It is also one of the few Wisconsin bottles that includes the “WEISS BEER” product name embossed on the bottle. Surprisingly, it is the first bottle to turn up from this long-lived and well known brewery. It was found by diggers in Pittsburgh and showed signs of heavy wear. It would not be surprising if other varieties show up from this brewery eventually. The embossing reads JACOB MUTH BREWING CO. BERLINER WEISS BEER and ALL PERSONS PROHIBITED FROM USING THIS BOTTLE on the back.

Member Tom Fredrick found this bottle while scuba diving with Bob Libbey for bottles. While several varieties of Fred Bock glass soda bottles are known to exist this is the first Fred Bock clay bottle and the only stoneware bottle from the city of Boscobel, Wisconsin. The bottle is stamped FRE-BOCK with the letter “I” turned sideways in place of a dash. It is probably one of the first bottles used by Fred Bock’s business which was thought to have started in 1882. There are many other similar Wisconsin stoneware bottles from other bottlers that were made by the same pottery maker, probably Charles Hermann & Co. from Milwaukee. Despite the missing top it is a wonderful and interesting find.

A recent Julie’s Antique Auction catalog featured a rare miniature salt-glazed stoneware canteen flask as the cover lot. The canteen measures about 3” tall and is marked “Compliments of G.M. PIERRON” on one side and “A HAPPY NEW YEAR 1894”. It has a heavy orange peel glaze one side. It was in mint condition with the original cork, chain attaching it to the handle and red white and blue ribbon. The unique features of this piece created the perfect storm of collector interest. It was made by Redwing, it is associated with the Pierron Stoneware Company, has a great glaze, is dated, rare and mint.