Summer Finds #6 2015

The September bottle club meeting produced a pretty exciting find, a Charles. M. Cole Newport, RI citrate of magnesia style medicine! Since there was only one RI citrate of magnesia known before this one, I think it's fair to say they are an endangered species. Is there a third one out there?

A few months ago I came across an Anthony Bottling Works Anthony, PA soda bottle in an antique shop. Now you might be wondering what a Pennsylvania soda bottle has to do with RI bottles, but truth be told this is a RI error bottle! It looks exactly like the smaller version, and the AS monogram is for Antoni Szymkowicz, the owner of the company. There is an Anthony, PA, but it is little more than a crossroads. Anyway, I finally found a broken example that I am keeping as a placeholder.

Along with the Twin City soda from last post, I acquired a Kerona Beverages Central Falls, RI soda. It is listed in aqua, but not clear. This one has the label to boot!

Also from the bottle club meeting was a J.L. & P. Gannon N. Providence, RI blob. Listed as RI-1024, my other example is 9-1/2”, while this one is 9”. There tends to be a bit of variation in the height of blob sodas, but half an inch is more than enough to consider it an unlisted size.

Fall in Brimfield is a beautiful time to be out picking for antiques. Brimfield proved yet again to be an inexhaustable source of RI bottles. Among them a J. Prior & Co. Inc. Providence, RI blob. Unlike the listed version, this one has “This bottle not to be sold” on the heel. 

Summer Finds #5 2015

A collector on the Bottle Collectors group on Facebook recently posted their finds at the National Bottle Show in Tennessee. At first I thought they were all foreign bottles, but when I looked closer I did a double take. There was a big Ferro-China style medicine embossed Societa Per Le Industrie Chimiche Providence, RI! That's the Industrial Chemical Company in Italian. Raffaele DeAngelis, the founder of the company, immigrated from Italy, so it would make sense that he catered to the Italian immigrant crowd. Needless to say I contacted the collector and we made a deal. It is the second known medicine from RI embossed in another language, and a pretty impressive one too!

Nothing gets the blood pumping like coming across a completely unknown RI bottle. When I saw an Acton Bros. Newport, RI crown top on ebay, the week-long wait was agonizing. There was surprisingly little interest in the bottle, and I easily won it. The Acton brothers ran the City Hotel for only 3 short years (1901-1903) before going their own ways. Often times hotel owners would bottle their own soda or liquor, and this bottle is pretty solid proof of that!

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are bottles you are almost guaranteed to find on a dig. A George A. Peckham Grocers Supplies Providence is definiteley one of them. I've all but lost count of how many variants I have. I found two on my last marsh dig, and sure enough, one was new! I had this variant in clear, but this one is aqua.

(example on left)

One of our club members was having a moving sale recently, and my “informant” notified me of the presence of some RI bottles. I came back with a nice Palmer & Madigan Importers Providence, RI quart whiskey. It is listed as RI-1735, which I had, but wait! It looked a lot different. My version had “chubby” shoulders that gradually merged with the neck, while this new example had squared off shoulders leading to a straight stovepipe neck. This usually doesn't qualify as a new find, but the style was different enough that I though it warranted attention.

My persistent antiquing finally paid off when I spotted a new dealer with a bunch of soda bottles for $5 each. I walked away with four, including a deco style Twin City Spring Beverages Central Falls, RI. It is probably one of my favorite RI deco bottles, which I already had in green. This clear one completes the unlisted pair!