As a beer drinker I go through many many bottles, probably too many… but I recycle, I promise! What I’m trying to say is I encounter bottles on a daily bases, many breweries these days design their own bottles that differ quite a bit from the narrow-mouth brown/green bottles we are all used to. New designs include embossing the brewery names or logos on the bottles, adding embossed designs, bands and patterns and etching information about the beer and brewery right into the glass! While these are all very neat, after working with some historic glass, I realized they lack a bit of ingenuity and uniqueness.

Most bottles we encountered in our historic glasswares lab included debri on the inside, breaks and cracks, imperfections, wear and tear, etc. All of these faults gave each bottle its own unique look and feel, and also it’s own story. How did each bottle get these imperfections during manufacture? How did each bottle get all these cracks? What can this debri tell us, is it just the remnants of an unfinished product or was it used multiple times?

One bottle that certainly has a story to tell is 45KI765/M-10. This is most likely an ale bottle that is green with a crown finish. While it has mold seams all the way through the finish; signifying a machine finish, the exterior has many imperfections as well an orange peel texture. The imperfections, like waves moving over the body of the bottle, seem to be almost intentional; creating this wave pattern design – it is very very unique! Being a bottle with a machine finish with many imperfections I would date it to the very early 20th century. The makers mark reads; “JL & Co LTD 684”, however online searches didn’t yield any results outside of finding that most JL & Co bottles were made pre-WWI. I would assume this bottle held a common beverage; soda or beer. However I am curious to the life story of the bottle. Despite being a common beverage bottle, whoever drank it must have seen that the imperfections made a delightful pattern that might have been rare in bottles of that time. I am curious if that person considered saving it, if they noticed it’s uniqueness or if this is only a trait that we start noticing once all our bottles are manufactured flawlessly.

-Roman Chichian

Curtice Brothers Preservers, Rochester, NY

Pictured here is an early twentieth century ketchup bottle produced by the Curtice Brothers Company, which was founded in 1868 in Rochester, New York. Although you have probably never heard of Curtice Brothers, their ketchup once rivaled the more well-known Heinz in the early twentieth century. The story of their descent into the recesses of popular memory is bound up with early government food safety regulations, but I’ll get to that in a moment…

The bottle itself was mouth blown and made in a two piece mold with a cup bottom, likely manufactured by the Berney-Bond Glass Company based in Pennsylvania.¹ The finish (the lip of the bottle) is externally threaded so that a cap could have been screwed on it and was made using the “improved tooled finishing” method, meaning that most of the finish was created in the mold itself with just minor tooled touches to ensure that the cap would fit.² This is evident in the seam on the finish, which nearly reaches the mouth, but you can see where the tool turned the seam.

Evidence of “improved tooled” finish

Also visible on the bottle is the maker’s seal on the shoulder reading “Curtice Brothers / Preservers / Rochester, N.Y.” within a circle. Vertical ridges line the sides of the body with an open space for the label, which would have marketed the company’s Blue Label Ketchup. An example of one of Curtice Brothers’ ads from around 1910 is shown below.

Circa 1910 ad for Blue Label Ketchup (Source: MSU Campus Archaeology Program)

The Curtice Brothers’ Blue Label Ketchup was a casualty of one of the first federal consumer protection regulations, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, a precursor to the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration. This Act sought to inform and protect consumers from drugs and additives that were perceived as dangerous. One of those dangerous additives was benzoate of soda, then a common preservative in many condiments, including Curtice Brothers’ ketchup. Unfortunately for the company in the long run, Curtice Brothers refused to change their ketchup recipe as they believed benzoate of soda was necessary and posed no threat. On the other side of the argument was Heinz Company, which began producing ketchup using a different recipe that omitted benzoate of soda but sold at a higher price. Despite initial successful legal pushback (note the language of the above ad referencing the endorsement of the US government), ultimately public opinion and government regulation against the additive won out and Curtice Brothers “Blue Label Ketchup” lost its market share to Heinz.³

1. Society for Historical Archaeology, “Bottle Typing/Diagnostic Shapes.” https://sha.org/bottle/food.htm#Catsup
2. Soceity for Historical Archaeology, “Bottle Finishes & Closures.” https://sha.org/bottle/finishes.htm
3. Smith, Adam F., 1996. Pure Ketchup: A History of America’s National Condiment, with Recipes. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

This is an amber medical bottle which contained Ozomulsion. Ozomulsion was “considered” to have been the cure for consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis) during the time it was manufactured. In researching the glass container, I discovered the bottle was first introduced in the 1880’s. It was manufactured in London, and New York. Dr. M. Donald Blaufox states that ads for Ozomulsion appeared as late as 1948. The amber bottle has large letters embossed on the front which spell “OZOMULSION”. Since the bottle is rather large, I would presume one would need to pour the contents into a separate container prior to using it.

Here’s an ad I found when researching Ozomulsion:

I would certainly expect Ozomulsion to have been in this bottle in the time it was discovered. Considering it was assumed to have been the cure for “consumption”, I would also suspect parents purchased the product for their children. It’s likely that anyone who believed this was the cure for consumption would have purchased this product if they were able.

– Stephanie H.

Resources:

Blaufox, M. Donald M.D., PH. D. (Unknown). Museum of Historical Artifacts: 19^th Century Medicine. Creative Commons Attribution. Retrieved 12 Feb. 2017 http://www.mohma.org/instruments/category/patent_medicines/ozomulsion/