Western or ?



I just noticed an auction listing on ebay for a wine bottle with an applied seal impressed with the words
S. Larnac.

The  description of this wine bottle includes "I’ve often suspected these were a Western product because of where their found and some recent research may confirm that". The description includes "In 1868, Wine merchant Adrien Chauche of San Francisco filed a trade mark for the "LARNAC" wine label pictured. The date of this filing is very close to the context the bottle was found in, late 60s. The few of these I know of were all found in Northern California". The description concludes with: "Likely a product of the “San Francisco Glass Works. While not 100% certain this is a  Western wine, the research certainly seems convincing". 

I was interested in this bottle and did a little research on the San Francisco Glass Works and the Larnac trade mark.
 
The San Francisco Glass Works ( Newman & Brannan) was destroyed by fire on July 23, 1868. It was not rebuilt and  back in operation until September 23, 1870.

According to the California State Archives S. Lognac and S. Larnac are attributed to the Bordeaux region of France.



 

The Larnac label

 

Reproduced below is the trade mark for the Larnac label filed on November 28, 1868, over four months after the SF Glass Works was destroyed.

 

 





 

 

 

 

The above trade mark is for the label - not the bottle 

Western or ?   You be the judge

 

Thanks to:

The California State Archives

Bruce Silva

Dale Mlasko

Early Western Glassworks - Warren B. Friedrich







John T. & William H. Daly

John T and William H. Daly, wholesale liquor dealers located in New York City, bottled several types of spirits from the early 1850's and into the 1860's. William Newell and Company, located in San Francisco, were the west coast's sole agents for the Daly brothers products during this period.

William H. Daly bottle

 

There are three variants of the Daly whiskey shaped bottle: the John T. and William H. Daly shoulder embossed, William H. Daly with the John T. slugged out shoulder embossed and the William H. Daly with no slugged out area. The John T. and William H. Daly is, I believe, the first and earliest variant as all examples I have examined have a sticky ball pontil on the base.

Shoulder embossing on the Daly's

The William H. with the John T. slugged out appears to be the second variant and the William H. with no slugged out area the third. All three variants of the Daly bottle contained Aromatic Valley Whiskey and were advertised as a "medicinal whiskey"

William H. Daly, listed as sole proprietor in 1859, claimed that "Produced as it is, by a process only known to the manufacturer, and extracted from the choicest grain, which grows nowhere, but in a favored location in the Valley of the Monongahela and contains no deleterious admixture".

Counterfeiting Daly's best selling products, during the gold rush era, seems to have been a problem for Daly, as can be seen by this advertisement from the January 1860 Nevada journal.

CAUTION 

It has come to my knowledge, that parties in San Francisco have resorted to the base artifice of attempting to forage my label, with some slight alterations using the name "Delays" instead of "DALY'S AROMATIC WHISKEY" and also using the name "Cumberland" instead of "MONONGAHELA"

These bogus labels have been put on bottles of entirely different shape from mine, containing the commonest trash and packed in cases intended to imitate and branded similar to the genuine, using the name "Delays" instead of "DALY'S" Dealers in the inferior as well as consumers are cautioned not to be imposed on by this bogus article. Particular attention is called to the shape of the bottle, which is unlike any other, and also th the name "WILLIAM H. DALY, NEW YORK" blown in each bottle.

I have no fears of this or any other spurious article interfering with the sale of my "AROMATIC VALLEY WHISKEY" but I cannot allow such a base fraud to be practiced upon honest merchants and the unsuspecting consumer without noticing it.

 

Wm. H. Daly

Sole Proprietor

New York

 

There it is in a nutshell, one of the reasons that manufacturers, proprietors and sole agents had their names embossed on their bottles and sought out unusual shapes to bottle their products in. This counterfeiting was not unique to the Daly brothers. Udolpho Wolfe's Schnapps, Dr. Rosenbaum's Bitters, A.P. Hotaling,s Cutter brands are a few that immediatly come to mind of the many products that were being fraudulently copied and pawned off to the public as the genuine article. 

 

 

 John T. is slugged out on this example

 

The Daly bottles are usually pretty crude and often filled with hundreds of seed bubbles and swirls in the glass. These bottles are considered common and collecting all three variants of this whiskey is an affordable and very nice addition to a gold rush collection. “Any real gold rush bottle collection has a Daly’s”

 

The Daly’s Aromatic Valley Whiskey was a very popular brand of whiskey in Sierra County during the gold rush era. The majority of early Sierra County merchants purchased bulk whiskey and bottled it on site in any container that was available for sale to patrons. These “bottled on site” whiskeys were often flavored and watered down with whatever was handy at the time. A bottle that had the agents name embossed on the glass and was sealed at the distillery or warehouse where it was bottled guaranteed the buyer “Genuine Goods” that were not tampered with.
 

Examples and shards of this bottle have been found in almost all of the camps, settlements and towns located in the North Yuba, Over North and Alleghany area. Three whole examples were found in Brandy City. The author found a dark green example sticking out of an eroded bank at Excelsior in 1988. A mint example of the William H. with the John T. slugged out was found at the site of the early gold rush settlement of Little Grizzly in 1982. Other camps in which the Daly has been found include: The Sierra Buttes Mine, Independence, Chaparral Hill, Downieville and Morristown. Of all the gold rush camps in Sierra County Monte Cristo, by far, has produced the most examples of the Daly bottle.

 

 

 

Whisky Display

Thinking about redoing the top western whiskey display at Reno 2020 .Would collectors be willing to put their high value bottles in a display??

Collin's Valley Bitters

A western bottle of mystery no more, or is it still. Before the labeled Collin's Valley Bitters was discovered, the bottle which the label was on had been a mystery for a long time. There has only been a hand full of these bottles found over the years. Mostly from the Northern Sierra foothills ( Gold Country) The two in the pic. the amber one was found by D. Bell in the foothills and the yellow one I found in mining tailings in the foothills. The labeled one I discovered in an antique shop in downtown Roseville in 2003, putting the connection of where the bottle was from finally. Yahoo, its western!

The label reads; "Collin's Valley Bitters" A perfect tonic,  prepared by, Harry Collins apothecary. Clark and Mayhew sole prop. Red Bluff, Cal.

 

 

The connection with these bottles is the uniqueness in which the bottle was made. Not only in shape but the repairs to the mold that you can see on the bottles. There is 3 repaired areas on 2 edges. Two on one edge and one on another.(see pics) The amber ones repairs are more crisp than the yellow one and the labeled one. Showing the long use of the mold. Strange that the amber one is plain with almost no character to it at all with crisp repairs, while the other two are much cruder with weak repairs. I have seen these in some nice colors, even green and they all have those repair marks.

 

 

 Now with that said, who, where and when was the Collin's Valley Bitters born. Well all I could find out was, the C.V.B was put out by Clark and Mayhew from Red Bluff, Cal. They are listed as general merchants and the only ad for C.V.B. was in the Red Bluff Independent July 12, 1873 and June 27, 1874. That says prepared and sold by Harry Collins Main St. Red Bluff, Cal. This is the only reference of Harry Collins I could find selling his bitters. No other ads are listed. A very short lived western bitters.

 

 

His first ad shows up on May 23, 1866 when he owned Apothecaries' Hall

 

 

Then again on July 30, 1868

 

 

By Feb. 19,1870 he sold the Apothecaries' Hall to W.J. Mason

 

 

So, sometime shortly after 1870 Harry Collins open up the Practical Apothecary store on Main St. Red Bluff, Cal. and started selling his "Collin's Valley Bitters" by 1873. Still not sure how Clark and Mayhew became Sole Prop's

 

 The last great mystery is where was this bottle made. It is unique with its repair marks and shape. There is however the T.M. with star bottle that is the same shape and age, but with no repair marks and is very western. These Collin's bottles only come from a small area in Nor Cal. It is hard not to believe its western made, but by whom. A bottle short lived like the Collin's Valley Bitters.

 

 

Aqua N. Van Bergen Gold Dust, 1880 and newer?

Now I'm confused. The folklore of western whiskey collecting tells us that the aqua N. Van Bergen Gold Dust bottle dates from 1877-1883. While trying to come up with some evidence to support this claim I came across some advertisements that N. Van Bergen put out in the Daily Alta from 1874 to 1883.


Daily Alta, July 10th, 1874:

The following ad in almost identical iterations ran in the Daily Alta from August 21st, 1874 to May 17th,1880:

Then, beginning on May 18th, 1880 this ad appeared and ran until July 28th, 1883:

Where it gets confusing is that Barkhouse Brothers & Co. from Louisville Kentucky was only in business from late 1871 to 1876 and then renamed themselves Kentucky Distilling Co. in 1877. Based on the above monthly ads, N. Van Bergen did not proclaim to be the sole proprietor of the brand until May 18th 1880. Who owned the brand from 1876 to 1880 ? It is interesting to note that Julius Barkhouse made two trips to California from Louisville, one in February 1878 and one in August 1879. Was he perhaps hammering out the details of N. Van Bergen's future sole proprietorship of the Gold Dust Brand ?

Does this mean the aqua N. Van Bergen variant dates to 1880 and is a few years newer than previously thought ? I would believe so and also believe that the aqua N. Van Bergen went well past 1883, perhaps up to 1887 or so.

Richard Siri admitted to the FOHBC Hall of Fame

 



The FOHBC Board of Directors announces that Richard T. Siri was voted into the FOHBC Hall of Fame with 14 of 17 votes constituting a 2/3 majority. The award with be presented at the 2018 Cleveland National banquet on Friday, 03 August 2018.
For someone whose brother lit the fuse that sparked an interest in collecting historical bottles, Richard Siri has come a long way. The first chapter in his story notes that his brother, Ted, was working on a road construction project in Willits, California in the mid 1960s and an 1890-1900 dump containing a pile of early Western whiskey bottles was uncovered. Fast forward to the present day, supported by his wife, Beverley, Richard, 77, is known for his extensive Western bottle collections having amassed one of the most complete Western bitters bottle collections, as well as extensive collections of whiskeys, Hostetter’s Stomach Bitters and USA Hospital bottles, among other things. He is always willing to share his knowledge on his favorite subjects and that knowledge has found a public place inside many books, articles and exhibitions about antique bottles. He has held several offices within the federation, most notably that as president in 2008. Richard co-chaired the FOHBC 2012 Reno National Antique Bottle Expo and the most recent, FOHBC 2016 Sacramento National Antique Bottle Convention & Expo. He is also a major supporter and an active member of the Northwestern Bottle Collectors Association. In 2009, Richard Siri first brought forth the concept of developing the FOHBC Virtual Museum. He now serves on the museum Board of Directors and he, along with his wife Beverley, is a major financial contributor to the museum.

The Hall of Fame is intended to recognize outstanding and significant contributions to the bottle collecting hobby that have made a lasting and enduring impact upon the hobby at the national or international level*. Such individuals should be generally known throughout the bottle collecting community for their collections, contributions and impact upon the hobby. Such contributions include but are not limited to research and publications that furthered a greater understanding of the history and production of bottles and glass, or major contributions that significantly encouraged people to participate in the hobby. Such contributions include creation and organization of significant activities or events that fostered growth, understanding, and cooperation in the hobby.

Richard's contributions to further the bottle collecting hobby are immeasurable.
 Congratulations Richard. - rs -