What Do Mason Jars Have to Do with the Erie Canal?

 

QUESTION: I’ve been collecting old mason jars for a while. Recently, I found a blue one at a flea market. Embossed on the front of it are the words “The Clyde.” The letters “CGW” appear on the bottom. I haven’t been able to find any information about this jar. Can you help me?

ANSWER: It appears that you found an old Mason jar made by the Clyde Glass Works of Clyde, New York, in 1895.

When New York Governor DeWitt Clinton proposed the Erie Canal that would cross the state, linking the Hudson River with the Great Lakes, people sarcastically called it "Clinton’s Big Ditch." A construction project of that magnitude, completed entirely by hand labor, seemed impossible. But by July 4, 1817, construction of the canal had begun. It wasn’t until October 26, 1825 that a canal boat made the first full-length voyage on the new canal.

Frederick Augustus Dezeng, an immigrant from Saxony, Germany, who operated a window glass factory near Geneva, New York, was a good friend of Governor Clinton. He understood the importance of being able to transport goods by water from Lake Erie all the way to New York City via the Hudson River. But more importantly, he realized that shipping his glass by canal boat would be safer and cause less breakage. Even carefully packed, glass didn’t  travel well in horse-drawn carts over bumpy dirt roads of unpredictable condition.

 saw the potential of doing business via the Erie Canal. Access to firewood to fuel the glass furnaces was a major reason, as was the ease of packet boats bringing in sand from Oneida, New York, along with quantities of potash lime via the Canal. He encouraged his  youngest of five children, William, to set up a glassworks along the Canal in nearby Laurelville, which later changed its name to Clyde.

William S. Dezeng and his brother-in-law, James R. Rees, went into partnership to open a glass factory to make cylinder window glass in 1827. They laid the cornerstone for their new enterprise on March 27, 1828, and the factory began production that year. A newspaper advertisement from 1833 promoted the firm’s glass as  first quality and free from imperfections. This was a major achievement in itself since up to that time window glass had many imperfections. In the process, a glassblower blew molten glass into a cylinder, then cut it it open and annealed it to flatten it out. However, ripples and small bubbles in the finished glass were almost unavoidable.

Orrin Southwick and Almon Wood, calling their glass business Southwick & Wood, built the first bottle factory in Clyde in 1864. Wood apparently withdrew to be replaced by Charles W. Reed to form the firm of Southwick & Reed—sometime between 1864 and 1868.

About 1868, Southwick, Reed & Company merged the bottle and window glass plants into a single unit. Unfortunately, the factory burned on July 24, 1873, but they rebuilt it  immediately.

Sometime during the following year, Clyde gained a license from the Consolidated Fruit Jar Company to produce Mason Patent jars. Since there were many fruit jars bearing the “CFJCo” monogram, their jars had “CLYDE, N.Y.” embossed on either the front or the back of each jar. When Consolidated apparently sold its fruit-jar interests to Hero around 1882, Clyde lost a major portion of its business.

In 1880, the owners of Southwick, Reed & Company incorporated as the Clyde Glass Works. By this time, Clyde was making soda and beer bottles, liquor flasks, and fruit jars, commonly referred to as Mason jars, marked with one of the Clyde logos. They produced quart jars in amber, aqua, cobalt blue, and clear glass but only made pint size jars in aqua.

Between 1868 and 1895, the Clyde Glass Works produced five different Mason jars—The Clyde, written in cursive, the CLYDE LIGHTNING and the CLYDE MASON’S IMPROVED, both embossed in all uppercase letters and made for the Consolidated Fruit Jar Company.

The Mason jar first appeared in the 1850s when John Landis Mason, a tinsmith from Vineland, New Jersey, was searching for a way to improve the relatively new process of home canning. Until then, home canning involved using wax to create an airtight seal above food. Users stopped the jars with corks, sealed them with wax, then boiled them. It was messy process and hardly foolproof.

In 1857, a 26-year-old Mason invented and patented threaded screw-top jars. The earliest Mason jars were made from transparent aqua glass. But Mason didn’t patent the rest of his invention—the rubber ring on the underside of the flat metal lids that created the airtight seal, which made wax unnecessary. By 1868, many glass companies were producing Mason jars. Including Southwick, Reed and Company. Though Mason tried to regain control of his invention after various court cases and failed business partnerships, he gave up.

Clyde Glass Works produced a clear Mason jar embossed with “The Clyde” in upwardly slanted cursive letters from 1895 to 1915. It was handmade with an old-style Lightning closure. Those jars with ground lips had narrow mouths while those with smooth lips had a regular size mouth. 

The firm first made these jars in 1895 to commemorate its incorporation as the Clyde Glass Works. By 1903, it had purchased new machines for making fruit jars but only used them to make jars until sometime during the following year. 

A jar, embossed with “CLYDE / LIGHTNING” on the side was a blown jar of green glass with a ground rim and sealed with an old-style Lightning closure. The "Lightning" toggle or swing-type closure had widespread use on a lot of different bottle types, though its primary use was on bottles for carbonated beverages, such as soda and beer, and canning jars. However, the sealing surface for these two main types of Lightning-type closures was different. Charles de Quillfeldt of New York City invented and patented this type of bottle or jar closure on January 5, 1875.  He originally intended his design to be used on beverage bottles but later altered it to use on canning or Mason jars.

Variations of the Mason jar include the "Improved Mason" which sealed on a shoulder above the thread instead of below. The Clyde Glass Works produced the Clyde Mason’s Improved jar by hand and embossed “CLYDE,” “IMPROVED,” “MASON” in three separate lines.

Out of 59 bottles identified as being made by Clyde, fifty-one were in the arched format—the arch and inverted arch. 

The glass works at Clyde, New York, had a long and varied history. Although it’s almost certain that Clyde never marked the majority of its containers, certain types of both bottles and jars were clearly identified as being produced at the plant. The earliest of these were jars, the Mason’s Improved jars with “S&W” and “SW&Co” embossed on the bottom edge came from the Southwick & Reed and Southwick, Reed & Company factories, respectively. These were almost certainly the earliest marked jars, made from 1864 to 1870. 

From 1870 to 1882, the factory made the Mason’s Patent and Mason’s Improved jars, embossed with the CFJCo monogram on the front and “CLYDE, N.Y.” on the reverse. Jars made between 1882 and 1890 didn’t have Clyde logos on them. The plant made The Clyde from 1890 to 1910, and produced the Clyde Mason’s Improved jar from 1895 to 1915. Lackluster sales forced the Clyde Glass Works to close in 1915.

The age, rarity, color, and condition of an antique Mason jar greatly influence its value.  A jar's age and rarity can be determined by the color, shape, mold and production marks of the glass, and the jar's closure. Mason jars usually have a proprietary brand embossed on the jar. Early jars embossed with "Mason's Patent November 28th 1858" that date from the late 1850s to early 1860s closely match the illustrations of Mason's 1858 patents. While the Clyde Glass Works’ Mason jars sell online for anywhere from $15 to $75, those embossed with the words “The Clyde” usually sell for higher prices.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "folk art" in the 2023 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Dreaming of Spring

 

QUESTION: I’ve always enjoyed gardening. I guess I inherited that gene from my father. Every year, he would wait impatiently for the first of the season seed catalogs to arrive. As a kid, I loved paging through them to see the lavish illustrations of all kinds of flowers and vegetables. As I got older, I began helping my father choose the seeds to plant for the summer growing season. Now as an adult with my own family, I’m carrying on the tradition with my own children and garden in our backyard. I never considered collecting seed catalogs until after my father died, and I helped my mother sort through lots of old things. I came across some of dad’s old seed catalogs and brought them home with me. But honestly, I have no idea which of them is collectible. Can you offer some history of seed catalogs and which ones might be the best to collect?

ANSWER: Seed catalogs are the botanical equivalent of a dream book—a grower’s wish list. The most interesting, quirky, art-filled seed catalogs are from the early 1900s.

The hand-drawn and painted, romanticized illustrations and resplendent plant descriptions made them equal parts information and entertainment while offering gardeners plants for their upcoming summer season.

The first known garden catalog appeared over 400 years ago at the 1612 Frankfurt Fair with the distribution of the bulb catalog, Florilegium Amplissimum et Selectissimum, by Dutch grower Emmanual Sweerts. The catalog contained 560 hand-tinted images of flowering bulbs, giving gardeners a glimpse of possibilities for their own gardens.

Many of the illustrations originated in botanical publications, useful for identifying plants and noting their medicinal uses, but this new publication distributed to fair-goers was a first to present bulbs for sale. Sweerts died in 1612—the same year the catalog first appeared in print—but it was reprinted for many years to come, right into the Tulipmania period in Dutch history.

Long before the soil warms, the first weeds sprout, and good intentions give way to busy summers, these gems tempt gardeners with visions of  ‘candy-sweet’ corn, crunchy cucumbers, and perfectly plump tomatoes.

It seems that gardening enthusiasts have been drooling over seed catalogs for a long time. Prior to his publication, other plant catalogs listed ornamental species growing in the private gardens of the rich and famous.

Wealthy Europeans had a penchant for collecting ornamental and newly discovered plant species from around the world. Printed catalogs with beautiful engravings depicting these rare botanical possessions helped them show off their status.

A few years after that Dutch catalog, René Morin published the first known French plant catalog in Paris.

Seed catalogs not only provide a bright spot in winter for the gardener, but they also offer a colorful glimpse into the past.

Seed catalogs continue to hold a colorful and important pride of place in history, and not just gardening history. These publications offered gardeners an interesting and informative glimpse into the past, so much so that the Smithsonian Institute Libraries contains a collection of about 10,000 seed catalogs dating from 1830 to the present day. The pages of these catalogs reveal not only details about the history of gardening in the U.S., but their text and illustrations also provide a fascinating look at printing, advertising and fashion trends through the years.

The honor of publishing the first American seed catalog goes to 18th century horticulturist David Landreth. The D. Landreth Seed Company, founded in 1784 in Philadelphia, introduced the zinnia, the white potato, various tomatoes, and Bloomsdale spinach to America, largely through its catalogs.

As American pioneers moved westward, ordering seed catalogs became an important way to bring fruits, vegetables and flowers with them to their new homes. When the nation's railway system grew and the mail service improved, the seed and nursery trade expanded as well.

After the Civil War, the mail order seed market became quite competitive, and nurseries used their catalogs to announce novelty items such as "Mammoth," "Giant" or "Perfection" varieties of flowers, fruits and vegetables.

Catalog covers became more elaborate, and catalogs contained more than basic information and began to include more detailed descriptions, testimonials, special offers, contests and awards the nursery’s plants had won at horticultural fairs or exhibitions. For example, Dingee & Conard's 1889 catalog contained a special insert on pink paper that gave a detailed listing of its discounted collection of popular varieties.

Boston's Joseph Breck & Company, established in 1818, published its first seed catalog in 1840. Called "The New England Agricultural Warehouse and Seed Store Catalogue," the 84-page publication included illustrations and horticultural details next to product listings. Today the company is called Breck's Bulbs, and it still mails free catalogs to customers.

Seed catalogs have reflected the times. For example, catalogs from 1945 celebrated the end of the World War II with colorful pictures and the advice to settle down and to decorate your home with flowers. Seed producers gave flower varieties victory-related names. The back cover of the Jackson & Perkins catalog in 1945 featured the 'Purple Heart' viola, for instance. In one patriotic display, the 1945 Burpee Seeds catalog depicted a V-For-Victory- shaped red Swiss chard plant surrounded by bomb-like carrots over a tomato shaped like a globe.

The beauty of seed catalogs comes from their photography and, in earlier examples some cases, their engraving. Even today, companies such as Territorial Seed Company, based in Cottage Grove, Oregon.

One of the most well known seed catalogs belongs to W. Atlee Burpee & Company,  founded in 1876 by Washington Atlee Burpee in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after starting a mail-order chicken business in 1876. The company expanded to selling garden seeds, farm supplies, tools and hogs after customers began asking for seeds they had grown in their native farms. 

In 1888, Burpee established the family farm, Fordhook Farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, as a family farm and the first experimental test field station in the United States. After he traveled to Europe to collect seeds which needed to be adapted to North American climates, Burpee conducted crop field trials.

In 1900, distant cousin Luther Burbank visited the farm inspiring him to create his own experiments. He later created additional research stations, including in California in 1909, to test seeds. By the turn of the century, Burpee's had created one of the largest mail and freight businesses of the time.

By 1915 Burpee was mailing over a million catalogs a year to American gardeners. But that same year, its direction began to change when Atlee’s son, David, inherited the company upon the death of his father. David’s main interest lay in victory gardens, and he became an early promoter of them during World War I. He also prioritized the company’s output in flower seeds and initiated several flower hybridization breeding programs. Burpee geneticists also began to modify the genes of seeds using x-rays and colchicine.

The advertisements began to include full-color advertising to include Burpee's strengths of reliability of seeds using the motto "Burpee's Seeds Grow" and leader in the industry while the catalog was compact, arranged by category, and easy to find the order form.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "folk art" in the 2023 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

It's Your Turn

 

QUESTION: I’ve always loved playing board games. When I was a kid, my family would have game nights. Each member of my family take turns choosing the games we played. While we played more modern games, I’ve always been fascinated by antique board games. How did board games get their start? What were some of the more popular games in the 19th and early 20th centuries? If I were to collect old board games, which ones would be the best to collect?

ANSWER: Collecting board games can be fun. The shear number of games produced during nearly 100 years of game production offers a wide variety of games to collect. Many people who collect games collect the ones they played as children. It’s a great place to start.

People have been playing games since ancient Egypt. The Romans loved to bet and rolling dice was popular. By the Middle Ages, playing cards was all the rage. Games became more sophisticated by the 17th century, as backgammon caught on. The Industrial Revolution and the introduction of electricity enabled the middle class to have more free time and by the late 19th century, parlor games, especially board games. The reliable light source encouraged people to seek evening amusements.

One of the most popular of these amusements was the game of checkers. While the more elite were more inclined to play chess, everyone else played checkers, often while sitting out on the porch on a summer’s eve or around the pot-bellied stove in the local country store in winter. While commercial manufacturers produced checkerboards, those that collectors love most are the handmade versions of light and dark wood inlaid in a contrasting pattern. 

Much the same can be said of backgammon and Parcheesi boards, some of which were made of glass with the board design painted in reverse on the back. Many of the game boards were beautiful works of art, with bold designs and bright colors, featuring fanciful characters or outrageous cartoons, often based on nursery rhymes, fairy tales or stories plucked from the headlines.

The counters, playing pieces, that people used to play these games range from the plain wooden circles of checkers and backgammon to elaborately carved pieces of exotic woods, jade and other semiprecious stones, and ivory for chess.

Board games offer the greatest variety for collectors. Most board games involve a race to the finish between two or more players who move their pieces along a printed track at a rate determined by the throw of a pair of dice, the turn of a numbered spinner, or the selection of cards.

In the 16th century, the Italians played Goose, the earliest known board game. But it wasn’t until the 19th century that board games existed in greater numbers. From about 1870 to 1960, when watching television gained popularity, manufacturers produced thousands of board games for the market. Some didn’t quite make it out of the gate while others gained phenomenal success.

The Mansion of Happiness, a game with a religious theme, first appeared in 1843 and was still popular over 40 years later in the 1880s. Winning, based on the Puritan view that success could be achieved through Christian deeds and goodness, required players to advance by landing on spaces denoting virtues like piety and humility and move backward when landing on spaces like cruelty and ingratitude. 

In 1860, The Checkered Game of Life rewarded players for mundane activities such as attending college, marrying, and getting rich. Daily life rather than eternal life became the focus of board games. The game was the first to focus on secular virtues rather than religious virtues, and sold 40,000 copies its first year.

By the 1880s, many games had a rags-to-riches theme. In Game of the District Messenger Boy, players are rewarded for landing on spots with attributes like accuracy and neatness and deducted for loitering.

Most games originated in New York City, as it was the center of the board game industry. The Game of Playing Department Store from 1898 showed what a novel concept it was for Americans to do all their shopping under one roof. Round the World With Nellie Bly from 1890, illustrated the Victorian fascination with travel and exploration, while Rival Policeman from 1896 used as its base the real-life story of a time when New York had two competing police departments.

Board games tell a lot about the culture in the United States at different times in its history from the mid 19th century to the mid 20th century. 

Probably the all-time most popular game to this day is Monopoly. Originally conceived in the late 1890s under a different name as a game of the poor versus the rich, it was mostly a game with rules and game boards that players customized themselves. Sometimes they used a piece of oil cloth for the board and whatever little objects they could find for the game pieces. But it wasn’t until 1935 that Charles Darrow, a broke and out-of-work man in southeastern Pennsylvania, took the game idea, using various concepts created by players over time, and packaged it into a product that he sold through Wanamaker’s Department Store in Philadelphia. While many accounts claim Darrow as the inventor, he wasn’t. But he eventually sold the game to Parker Brothers, the largest producer of board games in America at the time, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Collectors have a lot of reasons for collecting board games, but one of the main ones is the artistic and often complicated graphics which adorn the boards and box covers. Game manufacturers lithographed the graphics onto the boards in black and white, then carefully had low-paid young women hand tint them. But by the 1880s, chromolithography made it possible to produce multicolored boards. Some were faithful images of Victorian dress and customs while others were more abstract. In either case, the game’s box cover was what sold it. And even today, if a game’s box is lost or damaged, most collectors won’t purchase it. Ironically, the absence of game pieces, cards, dice, and spinners isn’t that important, though will detract from the game’s value.

Even though manufacturers produced thousands of games, not all that many survive in good condition and even fewer in pristine condition because nearly makers used cardboard and paper to produce them. Board game and moisture are a bad combination. 

From 1880 to 1950, three companies dominated the market for board games. One of the earliest was W & S.B. Ives Company of Salem, Massachusetts. Ives developed the game with the longest name—Pope and Pagan, or the Missionary Campaign, or the Siege of the Stronghold of Satan by the Christian Army. Like many other late 19th-century board games, Pope and Pagan had a religious theme. Board games of the time were meant to be educational and not just for amusement. Some taught geography or simple bookkeeping or social values, such as honesty and a respect for hard work.

Two other major board game producers were McLoughlin Brothers of New York City and Parker Brothers of Salem, Massachusetts. 

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "folk art" in the 2023 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Advertiques Foster Nostalgia

 

QUESTION: A few years ago, I visited one of those local historical museums which had a country store exhibit. I found the many containers with advertisements printed on them very interesting. I didn’t realize that advertising was so much in use in the 19th century. Since then, I’ve purchased a number of items sporting advertisements for the companies that made them. I’d really like to know the origin of advertising and the range of objects I have to chose from for my collection. 

ANSWER: “Advertiques,” or objects with some sort of advertising, are popular with collectors. It’s not unusual for collectors to pay big bucks for some of the larger and rarer items. And the variety of objects available is great, enabling collectors of every financial level to assemble a fine collection.

Manufacturers in the 19th century couldn’t resist employing useful items to promote their products, for at the time, promoting products was the key, unlike today where promoting the benefits to consumer is more the style. String holders, ashtrays, fans—all served as a promotional medium.

Advertising wasn’t limited to just trade cards, posters, and signs, originally used to advertise a business. Objects, like coffee mills, flour and coffee bins, and gum and candy machines, on the other hand, promoted a product. All were necessary to the functioning grocery or dry goods store of the late-19th and early 20th centuries. 

One reason collectors like these “advertiques” is that advertising is a vital part of doing business today. With other types of antiques, both the object and its function are now obsolete. But the advertising techniques used by business have changed very little since the late 19th century. Posters, free samples, and mass advertising are still in as much use today as they were over 125 years ago. 

One of the most widely collected form of promotion was the advertising poster. These first appeared in the late 18th century as black-and-white woodcuts. But the introduction of lithography in the 1850s led to a proliferation of brightly colored tin and paper posters.

While most people probably couldn’t recall any 19th-century advertising poster, there’s one that older people still remember from their childhood—the circus poster. Color lithography helped to spread the news of upcoming shows across the country.

Trade cards were miniature versions of advertising posters. Business owners paid small boys a few pennies to hand these out to passersby. These cards urged to recipient to a product, such as a cologne, or a patent medicine, or directed him or her to a specific store that sold the product.

Every grocery store had a least one coffee mill in which to ground roasted beans. Some of these cast-iron behemoths stood as tall as four feet, were handpainted in bright colors, and often bore the name of a particular brand of coffee. Today, the Coca Cola, vending machine, with the name “Coca Cola” emblazoned on its facade, does much the same sort of promotion.

And many store owners didn’t forget about their customer’s children. An array of gum, nut, and candy machines, with brand names such as Baby Grand and Delicious, gave the little ones something to do with their pennies. 

Wholesalers provided store owners with bins to hold flour, tea, and coffee—all featuring the brand name of a the product. One of the most popular with collectors were the sturdy oak cabinets that displayed Diamond Dyes and Coats Spool Thread. Coffee and tin bins, usually made of tin, featured colorful lithographed decoration, featuring everything from exotic locales to American warships. There were other dispensers, also. Wooden boxes with colorful lithographed labels held biscuits.

All of these objects bore an advertiser’s message. The blackboard that displayed the daily prices for eggs and butter came from a wholesaler, as did the string dispenser used to wrap meats at the meat counter. There were also match safes, calendars, and even thermometers—all with bearing an advertiser’s name. 

Some items had practical uses, such as serving and tip trays. Most brewers had metal trays made to serve beverages in taverns and soda fountains. Collectors today seek them out for their colorful graphics and sentimental renditions of popular scenes. 

To promote hair and beauty care products, manufacturers gave away tiny tin-and-glass mirrors, each bearing an advertiser’s message. They often featured the likenesses of famous stage actors and later movie stars. 

While not as common as tin or paper promotional items, pottery advertising memorabilia, such as stoneware jugs were also popular. Jugs bearing the name of a distiller or brewery or a soda like Hires Root Beer are favorites with collectors. Cereal bowls promoting Cream of Wheat feature images of the famous 20th-Century Limited train while sets of dishes promoted Buster Brown Shoes. 

No area of collecting is so passionate about condition as that of advertiques. Collectors shy away from rusted tine containers and water-stained paper goods. These collectibles need to be in pristine shape to be worth anything at all

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "folk art" in the 2023 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Connoisseur Collectibles

 

QUESTION: I love wine. And while I’m not what you call a connoisseur, I do have an appreciation for fine wine and wine culture. Over the years, I’ve assembled a collection of wine labels and about half a dozen antique corkscrews. I’d like to collect other wine-related items but am not sure what to collect. What advice would you give me to start a serious wine-related collection? 

ANSWER: You’re off to a great start. However, you need to research the history of wine making to know all the objects available to collect. In addition, you need to set a budget. Older, ancient wine-related objects can be extremely expensive. 

People have produced wine for around 8,000 years. Evidence of ancient wine production dates to 6,000 BCE in the Republic of Georgia. The development of pottery made fermenting wild grapes grown in what’s now Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, as well as coastal and southeastern Turkey and northern Iran easier.

In ancient Egypt, wine played a ceremonial role. Trade introduced winemaking into the Nile Delta around 3,000 BCE. By this time, people had begun growing grapes in vineyards. By the end of the Old Kingdom, five distinct wines, probably all produced in the Delta, constituted a canonical set of provisions for the afterlife.

But much of modern winemaking came from the ancient Greeks. Wine historians believe that retsina, a white aromatic wine produced in Greece today, is a carryover of the ancient practice of lining wine jugs with tree resin, which gave the wine a distinct flavor.

But of all the ancient cultures, the Romans had the biggest impact on the development of winemaking. Wine was an integral part of the Roman diet, and winemaking was a precise and thriving business. The expansion Winemaking expanded so much that by 92 CE Emperor Domitian was forced to pass the first wine laws.

During the Middle Ages, people from all social classes drank wine where grapes were grown. 

Today, more people have an appreciation for fine food and wine. And unlike objects associated with the preparation, eating, and storage of food, those associated with wine have been less popularized. 

While corkscrews are the most commonly collected of wine-related items, collectors are also interested in ephemera such as wine tags and wine holders. Early postcards, advertising and travel posters are usually colorful and make a nice addition to a collection, as do antique wine racks and holders. In addition, some collectors include wine tasters, funnels, champagne taps, and bottle stoppers in their collections.

Decanter labels, a general term intended to include labels for wines, spirits and sauces, as well as toiletries and medicines are also of interest to collectors. 

Also known as bottle tickets or bottle tags, decanter labels are commonly seen in silver or silver plate, although they were made in a number of other materials, including enamel, porcelain, mother-of-pearl and horn. Collectors look for a variety of different aspects including hallmarks, maker's marks and label design, which vary from plain bin labels used in cellars to beautiful, ornate labels which once adorned fine decanters, elaborate cruets and delicate toilet water bottles.

Other wine-related collectibles include wine coasters, goblets, tankards, port funnels, wine coolers, wine. jugs and pewter tankards. apparatus such as cellar equipment, corking machines. presses, barrel tools, vineyard tools, port decanting cradles, ceramic bin or cellar rack labels and numbers are also garnering interest. Wine collectibles can be displayed anywhere. Collectors often adorn their home bars with wine-related items.

For collectors whose budgets allow, there are ancient and antique wine bottles, wine coolers, antique wine glasses, and more available. 

By far, the most popular wine-related antique/collectible is the corkscrew. Early corkscrews weren’t just intended to open wine. During the 18th and 19th centuries, many items used cork for closer, including beverages of all sorts, medicines, apothecaries, foods, sauces and perfumes. Eventually, most of these items were packaged in other forms, but wines and other spirits still required a corkscrew.

The first American corkscrew patent was issued in 1851. Since that time, more than 1,000 corkscrew patents have been issued in the United States alone, giving collectors an endless selection of shapes, styles and themes in a variety of price ranges.

The Rockwell Clough Company of Alton, New Hampshire, produced a number of wood-sheathed advertising corkscrews for businesses ranging from breweries to laundries and insurance agencies. These have a patent date of October 16, 1900 Those made in the 19th century often had carved ivory, bone or tusk handles and can sell for three figures. There are also corkscrews, dating to about the turn of the 20th century which double as walking sticks.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "folk art" in the 2023 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Whiskey by the Jug

 

QUESTION: Recently, while browsing the tables of a local flea market, I discovered a cute little porcelain jug with the name “Old Maryland 1881...St. Louis, Mo.” Stamped on the bottom was the mark “K.T.K./CHINA.” Can you tell me what company made this and what would the jug have contained?

ANSWER: Little ceramic jugs like this usually held whiskey. They were a gimmick used by distillers to promote their liquors. The firm of Knowles, Taylor & Knowles Company of East Liverpool, Ohio, made many of them and their “K.T.K./CHINA” mark the bottom of many of them.

From the early 17th century, people drank liquor regularly. And there were always people who viewed it as evil and sought to prevent its use, usually by taxation. In 1753, the legislature of the Colony of New York established an excise tax. By the 1850s, at least 13 states had enacted some type of prohibition laws against the use of liquor, yet by the Civil War, most of these laws had either been repealed or declared unconstitutional.

The Civil War Excise Law of 1862, which established a license for "retail dealers in liquors," originally exempted pharmacists. Two years later, Congress amended the law to apply a $1.50 per gallon tax on all distilled spirits that also applied to pharmacists. But in 1870, Congress again amended the law permitting pharmacists to dispense alcohol for "medicinal purposes.”

There are some Knowles, Taylor & Knowles china whiskey jugs that have the words "expressly for medicinal use" imprinted on them. An ad in the Daily Crisis of East Liverpool, Ohio, on September 10, 1892, stated, “Cholera, the best and finest prevention of this dread disease is to use a few drops of Diamond Club Pure Rye in every drink of water." The distiller declared this whiskey to be “officially recognized by the medical profession in every part of the United States as the purest on the market and is used extensively of medicinal purposes, in kidney diseases and ailments of a like character. It is acknowledged to be unequaled as a bracer and appetizer and as a rejuvenator of a debilitated system." Not only did liquor distributors continue selling their products, they also found a way to avoid paying the excise tax. 

The firm of Knowles, Taylor & Knowles Company began operations in 1870, when Isaac Knowles, Colonel John N. Taylor (Isaac’s son-in-law), and Isaac's son Homer formed a partnership.. By the early 1890s, the firm had mastered the making of bone china called Lotus Ware. 

The china whiskey jugs produced by the firm were bulbous and tapered to a slender neck, decorated with gold trimming. The top of the applied handle, also decorated with gold, had the look of a serpents head, a novel way for the jug to stand out from other whiskey jugs.

The mass-produced jugs came in several colors with transfer designs. Green seemed to be the most widely used color, but sometimes the same style jug appeared in red, blue, and brown.

Jugs also came in different sizes, the most common being the quart size, but there were also pints and half pints. Most jugs had one handle but some had two.

The sharp and artistic transfer designs on the jugs showed off the talent of the artists and the innovative ideas of the firm. The fancy lettering on the jugs may have inspired collectors to keep the jugs as decorative pieces, instead of discarding them as just another container.

George W. Meredith of East Liverpool, Ohio, a former employee of Knowles, Taylor & Knowles Company, fast became a leader in the distribution of his product called "Diamond Club Pure Rye Whiskey." At his peak, he distributed his whiskey from coast to coast. Meredith, who was always looking for new ways to sell his whiskey, and his association with the firm of Knowles,Taylor & Knowles Company, probably had a lot to do with the production of the unique china whiskey jug.

An aggressive advertiser of his "Diamond Club Pure Rye Whiskey ," Meredith was the only distributor known to use the pint and half-pint containers. He also had a 154-inch size, known at the time as a "watch fob." Though it didn’t contain any whiskey, it was a consistent reminder to its possessor of the G.M. Meredith Company.

During this same period, American liquor distributors were also looking for ways to sell  their products, and on special occasions, to provide a gift to their best customers. The fancy liquor containers, inexpensive to purchase, were the perfect solution. The Irish, British and Scottish distributors of the same era had been using fancy jugs to promote their whiskey and had been very successful in thwarting thefts.

Knowles, Taylor & Knowles Co. also produced hand-painted china whiskey jugs. Companies or individuals not in the liquor business purchased these jugs for special occasions. The hand-painted jugs were interesting in themselves, as they showed the Victorian influence. Some had Victorian ladies painted on them surrounded by silver overlay. The scenes often depict flowers, from single roses to bunches of flowers with leaves and stems.

Though Knowles, Taylor & Knowles made jugs with transfer designs, their hand-painted jugs aren’t as easily recognized. The firm didn’t mark its jugs, whether hand-painted or not, any differently. During the Victorian era and into the 20th century, it was popular to buy undecorated items and paint them for business or gifts. Often a professional artists decorated the piece, so the decoration itself cannot offer a clue as to whether or not a piece had been decorated at the factory. Also, most of the factory pieces weren’t signed because the artist worked by the piece and too much time would have been wasted by signing and dating items. However, amateur artists did like to sign their pieces. Most hand-painted items found today that are signed and dated probably fall into that category.

Knowles, Taylor & Knowles produced their china whiskey jugs from 1891 to the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, when bankruptcy forced the company to close.

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