The mill village
of Arctic, RI is known to
local bottle collectors as the home of the Warwick Bottling Works (later
Warwick Club). They were one of the biggest
beverage companies in RI, if not the biggest at one time. But, this village was also home to a few
pharmacists, which you can count on one hand.
I was very excited to see an unlisted bottle from Sterrat & Johnson Arctic Cente, RI show up on ebay. Research showed they were only in business
for a few years in the 1890s. All the
other Arctic bottles I know are simply embossed Arctic
without Centre, so this was a fairly important find!
I mentioned last week that a friend of mine purchased a
collection of blobs. Another surprise
was an unlisted local soda! John F. Perry of Narragansett Pier, RI was one of five bottling companies in
Narragansett. He was also the oldest and
most diverse as far as bottles go. This
example has a nice oval slugplate and a somewhat fancy embossing style.
A fellow digger in the LRBC (Bill) has been digging at a
farm dump with good results. I was
quickly able to deduce that the early occupants of the farm had acquired a
taste for the Oates Brothers Providence,
RI products. I acquired four
different variations, including one listed version in the unlisted color of
aqua.
I have recently returned to a mill village dump I have been
digging on and off at for about five years.
My digging certainly proved that it had been thoroughly dug, but I
finally found two pockets that the other diggers missed! Among the loot was a nice W.H. Arnold River Point, RI
handmade crown top. I have a weak spot
for the narrow body sodas in a grey aqua.
I’m not sure what the cause of color is, but these grey aqua sodas seem
to date from the mid-late 1910s.
An invite to dig near an early 1800s house is hard to turn
down, even when there is snow on the ground!
The white stuff sure made the dump harder to find, but once I found it,
not a single bottle was safe. It didn’t
get as old as I had hoped, with most of the finds dating to the 1920-50s
era. While somewhat mundane, I found a
base embossed Colonial Bottling Co.
Providence, RI green quart crown top soda.
I have a clear one, so this makes a pair!
