BOTTLES, BOOZE, AND BACK STORIES

Harvey F. Crawford and His Shoes Under Glass

2012-01-20T06:43:00.000-08:00

For reasons I have yet to fathom, certain businesses commonly provided glass paperweights to advertise their products or services. Among them were funeral homes, steamship lines and distillers. But perhaps the most frequently seen are from shoe companies. The epitome of this phenomenon was the Crawford Shoe Company.

This observation sends us to a hard luck but persistent and far-sighted entrepreneur named Harvey F. Crawford. Born in Maine, about 1881 Crawford emigrated to Brockton, Mass., as a young man where he was determined to succeed in the shoe business. His picture shows him with a shock of black hair, a large walrus mustache, and piercing dark eyes.

He created his first shoe manufacturing company with $25. It soon failed. Undeterred Crawford began again. This time his factory burned down. He started over yet a third time, but in 1886 was forced to declare bankruptcy when a local bank failed taking his cash reserves with it.

In 1887, with a deep-pockets new partner funding the enterprise, Crawford launched a fourth shoe company with an outlandish retailing idea. He would open proprietary shoe stores in good locations in large Eastern cities to merchandise the products of his Brockton factory. He also would sell cheap (shoes for $3.50 and $5.00) and advertise heavily in popular magazines of the day. Said a 1902 biography of Crawford: Many of his friends tried to dissuade him from what they deemed certain failure.”

As it turned out, Harvey was the Sam Walton of his day. Over a period of 15 years he opened stores in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Haven, and Washington. Their success allowed Crawford to open a second shoe factory in New York City. Within a decade he could boast 30 outlets in major Eastern cities.

Another of Harvey’s inspirations was an emphasis on customer giveaways. He favored paperweights. Shown here are an array of weights from a number of Crawford’s outlets in major cities. They demonstrate an array of vintage shoe styles. Several added color to the image.

For his Washington, D.C. retail outlet Harvey abandoned the shoe motif to issue paperweights depicting the Washington monument and the G.A.R.. Encampment of 1892 in the Nation’s Capitol. A thriving veterans organization of former Northern soldiers and sailors, the G.A.R. was a highly potent political force during the post-Çivil War era. A feature of its national conventions were commemorative medals sold to participants. Crawford replicated one on a paperweight.

Among the dignitaries attending the 1892 encampment was Rutherford B. Hayes, a former president of the United States (1877-1881) and a Union army officer during the Civil War. From Hayes we have a narrative of what happen in Washington during the G.A.R. national event. Hayes marched shoulder to shoulder with the rank and file as the “great parade” of veterans surged down Pennsylvania Avenue to great crowd applause. “Nothing of the sort could have been better than the demonstration on Fifteenth Street -- Treasury on one side, Riggs House on the other....It was enough to stir the blood of the coldest and the oldest,” Hayes recorded in his daily journal. He did not mention parading by Crawford’s shoe store at 9th and Pennsylvania.

Crawford’s prosperity did not last long. Creative but not particularly good at managing a business, after 1902 he was forced to sell out to other interests. The company eventually was owned by Charles A. Eaton, who raised prices and tried for a classier shoe image by featuring a huntsman with his dog.

As for Crawford, after retiring from the shoe business he was associated with the Crawford Manufacturing Co., making the Crawford rigid steel shoe shank. He also patented inventions in shoe manufacturing and appliances and was recognized widely in Brockton as a leader in local business development. After a long illness, Crawford died in his Brockton home, age 70.

Part of Harvey Crawford’s legacy is a wealth of glass paperweights to remind us of the footwear styles of yesteryear. The weights also memorialize the creativity of a entrepreneur who declined to let three failures at retailing shoes deter him from a fourth, spectacularly successful, enterprise.

Pantin Paperweights: Snakes in the Glass

2012-01-06T16:32:00.000-08:00

My fascination with snakes and other reptiles in ceramic also translates into glass, in this case glass paperweights. The most famous and rare of these were produced in France in the middle of the 19th Century by a company generally known as “Pantin.” According to sources fewer than 20 of these snake, salamander and worm paperweights are known. From a range of Internet sources I have gathered eight Pantin weights to show here.

Little is known about the Pantin factory and what information is available often is partial and even conflicting. One account goes like this: The Cristallerie de Pantin was founded by E. S. Monot at LaVillette, France, in 1850. It moved to Pantin, near Paris, in 1855. The company manufactured glass tubes and other chemical glass, crystal drinking vessels, and chandeliers. None of the weights Pantin produced were signed or dated. Evidence of Pantin paperweight making is in printed materials from the Paris Universal Exposition of 1878. American delegate Charles Colne described the snakes, lizards, fruits, and millefiori that amazed him in their skilled craftsmanship. The company continued until 1915, when it merged with Legras & Cie to form Verreries et Cristalleries de St. Denis et Pantin.

The artists who produced these weight overcame the risks involved in representing delicate and detailed animals in molten crystal, while preserving the fine quality of the lampworking. Frequently the bodies were wheel-cut to simulate scales. The legs and other details were added. It is suggested that one reason salamanders are a frequent Pantin motif is that they were thought to be able to survive fire unharmed. As such, it is said, they were long revered by glassmakers.

In 2010, A Pantin weight sold for $65,370, more than double its estimate. Shown here, it is just over 4 inches in diameter and shows a yellowish orange spotted black salamander clambering across green leaves with red and white flowers, all set on an opaque white ground mottled with moss and buff-coloured sand. Beautiful, indeed, but a pricey piece of glass.

The red salamander weight that follows is another prize. It was part of the Henry Melville Fuller collection of paperweights given to the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire in 1999. Said Mr. Fuller: "One of my favorite weights from this period was made by Pantin, a factory near Paris. The paperweight is somewhat unusual...lizards and snakes being a favorite subject of the Pantin artists. But these weights are very scarce, for the factory was only in business for a short time."

Most known Pantin weights can be found in museum collections. The next item, featuring a green snake, is from the collection of the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. In 1978 that institution brought together 13 examples in a special exhibit, believed to be the largest assemblage ever made of Pantin weights. The Chicago Art Institute has in its collection a Pantin weight that features three silkworms on a mulberry leaf. I am uncertain of the provenance of the last four weights shown here.

For $65,000, one of these Pantin weights might be purchased to be held in the hand. As the next best thing, this post offers up this array of eight for viewing, each offering its own “eye candy.” And they are presented here free of charge.

Whence Ephemera Collecting in an E-Age?

2011-12-15T05:57:00.000-08:00

Recently the Washington Post ran a lengthy article on collectors of ephemera, that is, people who all kinds of items that are made of paper or other substances that were never meant to last over time. The word itself is from the Greek and means “for a day.” There is even an Ephemera Society of America with a sizable membership and a website.

These folks collect an amazing list of items. Among them are advertisements, billheads, stock certificates, trade cards, postcards, sheet music, photographs, bookplates, cigar box labels & bands, and greeting cards. The hobby is not a new one, having begun in England a century or more ago as the British developed colorful lithographic printing with elegant designs that were collected and often pressed into scrapbooks. Shown here is a particularly interesting early British trade card, currently valued at $800.

As American printers and design caught up to the Brits in the 1900s, American printers and lithographers began turning out attractive color images, such as the ad for the Colorado Rockies shown here. This card is in a university collection. Other U.S. trade cards, such as the Uncle Sam shown, here come up at auction frequently. Often they bring high prices.

Ephemera collectors sometimes can make innovative use of their hobby. One of them is Author Caroline Preston. Ms. Preston, shown here, is described as a “former archivist and keen collector of ephemera. She has employed her collection to give birth to a new literary form: a novel that revolves around ephemera. She calls it “The Scrapbook of Freddie Pratt.”

The story, laid during the “Roaring 1920s” in a type set narrative set among images of vintage paper items. Ms. Preston, a collector herself, uses illustrations from fashion drawings, valentines, cigarette ads, party game boards, prescriptions for medicine, and trade cards to tell her story. The novel has garnered a number of favorable reviews.

I suspect very few collectors could pull off what Ms. Preston has done. For most of us, ephemera ends up tucked away in scrapbooks or plastic paged albums or even file folders. When I first began writing articles for collector magazines in 1990, I mailed my manuscript to the publishers with numbered photos inside as the illustrations. Most of them were photographs that I had purchased or taken myself. Sometimes the photos were of ephemera I had been forced to purchase just to fill out a need for pictures. Many of those trade cards, ads, etc., are still tucked at various places around the house. A few were displayed in my July 2011 post on “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye.”

With the dawn of the Internet, however, a revolution has taken place. Author William Gibson, shown here, in an interview with the Washington Post on 2007 called it the “eBay era “ Gibson, who is credited with inventing the term, “cyberspace,” noted that “every class of human artifact is being sorted and rationalized by this economically driven machine that constantly turns it over and brings it to a higher level of searchability....It’s like some sort of vast curatorial movement.”

Gibson is dead right. Moreover, eBay, Google, and other sites are bringing to public view all manner of ephemera from bygone days and exposing them to public view. No longer are trade cards, labels, travel stickers, and old photos stuck away to be looked at by an individual collector when the mood hits. Now they are on public view 24-7 and often for sale.

For several years now, I have not mailed any photos. The illustrations for my pieces, like the text itself, fly over the Internet to my editors. In one instance, the final format of the piece is itself an Internet newsletter, sent to members of a collecting club. It never sees a “hard” copy. As a result of the changes the electronic age has brought, I have accumulated on my Mac several thousand images, most of them of ephemera. They grace my articles and fuel this blog and its companion blog: “Those Pre-Pro Whiskey Men.” I collect several images virtually every day, file them on the computer, and call them up when needed.

Recently for the whiskey man blog, I did a post on a man named Domenico Canale who created a liquor and food dynasty in Memphis, Tennessee. Much earlier I had come across a marvelous circa 1910 photo of a fruit vendor, which Domenico had once been, pushing a cart that advertised Canale’s flagship whiskey, “Old Dominick.” It was a highly useful image to put across visually the rapid rise of an Italian immigrant boy to financial success. I have filed the photo away on my computer to use in such other contexts as may arise in the future.

What is the bottom line for ephemera in an electronic age? Go digital, you collectors, go digital!

Buggy Makers: Gone But Not Forgotten

2011-12-03T06:38:00.000-08:00

It is customary to say when something becomes obsolete that it “went the way of the horse and buggy.” Certainly the invention of the automobile in the late 19th Century doomed thousand of carriage makers in the United States. By the early 1920s, except for specialty builders (e.g. for Amish), virtually all were out of business. Earlier, however, a number of those companies had preserved their finest flivvers on glass paperweights that have survived through ensuing decades, many for a century or more.

This post celebrates that industry by depicting ten weights depicting buggies and providing a bit of history on each, as possible. The first, from C.H. Armstrong & Son is one of few employing color. It displays a large wheeled carriage and claims not only to provide “regular styles” but also “original novelties.” This firm was located in Wakefield, Rhode Island. It was a large carriage operation manufacturing in a long three story building with accompanying sheds. C.H. Armstrong & Son had its beginnings in 1861 and closed in 1921 when its attempts at invading the automobile business failed.

The Columbus Buggy Company was formed out of earlier companies in Columbus, Ohio, about 1875. By 1900 it was the largest buggy manufacturer in America, employing more than 1,000 workers. It is reported that both Harvey S. Firestone and Eddy Rickenbacker got their early business experience while working at the Columbus Buggy Company before moving on to other ventures. With the advent of the motor car, the company began to produce automobiles early in the 20th Century, both electric and gas powered. The vehicles failed to attract customers and the Columbus Buggy Company went bankrupt in 1913.

One of the classiest buggy paperweights in my view is one from the Buffalo Spring and Gear Company of Buffalo, New York. My research into this company has not resulted in much information, including not determining if the company made complete carriages or only springs and gears. I did discover that the Buffalo firm went out of business in 1902, well before the automobile took over. Little information is available as well on A. Meyer & Bro. They were a San Francisco firm and listed in a directory there in 1886-1887.

Henry Hooker was the head of the carriage company that bore his name, located in New Haven, Connecticut, and probably the individual most responsible for the paperweight with a photogravure picture of a buggy. A direct descendant of the Civil War general, Thomas Hooker, Henry was born in 1809 in Kensington, Connecticut. In 1840, he married Charlotte Lum of Oxford in that state and they had two children, both born in New Haven. Hooker died in 1873, before the automobile age, and a school in New Haven is named in his honor.

Wm. D. Rogers Son & Co. of Philadephia was one of America’s largest and most important carriage builders of the mid to late 1800s. This firm about 1894 moved from manufacturing the stage coach shown on the paperweight to constructing automobile bodies. It is said to have turned out the first limousine and first touring car bodies ever made in Philadelphia, constructing them for prominent local businessmen. Despite the fact that the Rogers company had a reputation for fine work, it went out of business in the 1920s.

I have been unable to find information on the Pierre Brault company of Montreal. But the J.D. Mockridge Carriage Repair was a Montclair, New Jersey, firm that operated from a large three-story building on Greenwood Avenue. There is a 1892 photo of the establishment that displays its production of buggies, wagons, and a horse drawn ambulance it was building for a local hospital. The paperweight, characterized by a multi-color format, is marked as the product of the Pyrophoto Company of New York City.

Samuel E. Bailey established his first company in 1890 in York, Pennsylvania. He specialized in the manufacture of wagons and later opened a factory for carriages in nearby Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He became the region’s largest employer, opened a show room in Philadelphia and erected a new, larger factory in 1896. The epitaph for the company, written by a historian of the buggy industry, reads: “Unfortunately the firm’s directors did not anticipate the success of the automobile, and in the mid-teens the region’s largest manufacturer was forced into bankruptcy.”

Our final paperweight is from the Burr Coach Builders of New York City. Note that it is straddling both worlds as other buggy makers tried to do, featuring both horse-drawn carriages and automobiles. Burr is reported to have experimented with automobile bodies as early as 1897 when they built the body for Henry W. Struss’s 4-cylinder Struss automobile. Burr was listed as a manufacturer of automobiles in the 1901 Hiscox directory, but historians doubt that complete vehicles were ever produced. Like so many similar manufacturers, Burr & Company did not survive, going out of business after 1910.

Ten paperweights tell ten somewhat different stories, the common thread being attempts to meet the threat to the horse and buggy from the newly invented internal combustion engine. Carriage manufacturers responded in diverse ways, but ultimately all memorialized here did not survive the technological revolution. But the artifacts they left us help to keep their memories fresh: gone but not forgotten.

Alphonse Mucha and His Art Nouveau Drink Posters

2011-11-19T09:18:00.000-08:00

In past posts, readers of this blog have seen my interest in “Art Nouveau,” the artistic movement that took hold in the latter part of the 19th Century in Europe and America that featured organic influenced shapes and sinuous lines. As a result I have long been interested in Alphonse Mucha, a Czech who was one of the leading practitioners of this form. Among his creations were a number of illustrations to merchandise a variety of alcoholic beverages, including champagne, cognac, liqueurs and beer. Through this post I have brought the images of these Mucha creations to one place on the Web. Note too that many Mucha illustration depict bottles.

His Wikipedia biography gives details of the life of Mucha, who died in 1939: "Alphonse Maria Mucha was born in 1860 in the town of Ivanice, Moravia (the present Czech Republic). Although his singing abilities allowed him to continue his education through high school in the Moravian capital of Brno, drawing had been his main hobby since childhood. He worked at decorative painting jobs in Moravia, mostly painting theatrical scenery.

"In 1879 he relocated to Vienna to work for a major Viennese theatrical design company, while informally augmenting his artistic education. When a fire destroyed his employer’s business during 1881 he returned to Moravia to do freelance decorative and portrait painting. Count Karl Khuen of Mikulov hired Mucha to decorate Hruaovany Emmahof Castle with murals and was impressed enough that he agreed to sponsor Mucha’s formal training at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. “Mucha moved to Paris in 1887 and continued his studies at Academie Julian and Academie Colarossi. In addition to his studies, he worked at producing magazine and advertising illustrations.

"About Christmas 1894 Mucha happened to go into a print shop where there was a sudden and unexpected need for a new advertising poster for a play featuring Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous actress in Paris. Much volunteered to produced a lithographed poster within two weeks and on 1 January 1895 the advertisement for the play was posted in the city where it attracted much attention.

“Mucha produced a flurry of paintings, posters, advertisements and book illustrations, as well as designs for jewelry, carpets, wallpaper and theater sets n ha was termed initially the Mucha Style but became known as Art Nouveau (French for “new art). Mucha’s works frequently featured beautiful young women in flowing, vaguely Neoclassical-looking robes, often surrounded by lush flowers which sometimes formed halos behind their heads. In contrast with contemporary poster makers he used pale pastel colors.

“His Art Nouveau style was often imitated. The Art Nouveau style, however, was one Mucha attempted to disassociate himself from throughout his life; he always insisted that rather than maintaining any fashionable stylistic form, his paintings were entirely a product of himself and Czech art. He declared that art existed only to communicate a spiritual message, and nothing more; hence his frustration at the fame he gained by his commercial art, when he most wanted to concentrate on more artistic projects.”

Mucha’s concerns about his commercial art seem ludicrous in light of the many of his wine and liquor prints that decorate many homes, apartments and college dormitory rooms. They celebrate products, many of which are still sold today. They include Moet & Chandon and Heidsieck champagne, Bisquit Cognac, La Trappestine liqueur, and my favorite, Benedictine. Bieres de al Meuse seems to have dropped off the French brew map long ago, however, while the Mucha poster goes on and on in sales.

Anna Pottery and Alcohol

2011-11-04T06:59:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post entitled “Snakes in Clay” (September 2010), I traced the history from 16th Century France to the present day of creating ceramic objects that incorporate in them a variety of snakes, lizards and other creepy crawly animals. The article included material and images of the snake jugs produced by the Kirkpatrick brothers at their Anna, Illinois, Pottery, shown here in 1885. I alluded in passing to my skepticism about the standard interpretation that the jugs were powerful anti-alcohol, “temperance” objects.

Ceramic gurus have opined that the jugs “illustrate the evils of strong drink” and that “the ghastly images evoked in these jugs are brutal and meant to be a warning to those tempted by liquor.” One critic cites the Kirkpatricks as “having a tenacious adherence to temperance principles.” Certainly a look at the first jug pictured here would seem to bear out those opinions. It appears to show a man being nibbled to death by a pack of slimy creatures. Is this what Wallace and Cornwall Kirkpatrick, the latter shown here, were try to say?

The fallacy of this temperance view can be seen in two other jugs featured here. This visual evidence is backs up the observations of Author Richard D. Mohr in his 2003 book entitled, “George Ohr and the Brothers Kirkpatrick.” Mohr states: “I suggest that literalist readings of the snake jugs, readings which take them as nothing but temperance propaganda, are almost certainly too simplistic and probably flat out wrong.” Right you are, Mr. Mohr, and shown here is further proof of your contention.

The two Albany slip jugs shown here were commissioned by Brachman & Massard from the Kirkpatricks and Anna Pottery And who were Brachman and Massard? They ran a wine and liquor wholesale and retail business that was located at 81 West Third Street in Cincinnati. The first jug, shown from three angles, features a snake that wraps around the neck of the jug and then loops out to form the handle. The incised letters in the Albany slip on the front identifies the item as a “Little Brown Jug” from the liquor dealers and bears the date 1876.

If the witness of this jug is not enough to dispel the notion of the Kirkpatrick’s temperance crusade, a second ceramic crafted for Brachman & Massard should be sufficient. Shown here in two images, this small jug carries a similar label, including identification of the company as wine and liquor dealers. But it adds a most unusual feature: At the base are incised a group of slashes that indicate 8 to 7.

The most likely interpretation is that this was the Kirkpatrick’s enigmatic reference to the Presidential Election of 1876 in which Samuel Tilden, the Democrat, received a larger popular vote than the Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes, but the electoral vote essentially was a tie. To decide which one would become President a group of five House of Representative members, five Senators and five Supreme Court Members were selected. By an 8 to 7 vote -- widely thought to have been swayed by political promises - - they determined that Hayes was the winner. The result set off a firestorm of protest as expressed in a Thomas Nast Harper’s cartoon of the time. On another snake jug the brothers emblazoned “Eight villains to seven patriots.”

While the Kirkpatricks frequently made such political statements on their ceramics, it is clear that the brothers were not demonstrating a pro-temperance attitude by fashioning two jugs for Cincinnati liquor dealers. Or by creating a ceramic pig, shown here, that invites “a little good old Bourbon.” Rather, the symbolism of the Anna Pottery snake jugs expresses the brothers’ sardonic, highly individualistic look at the world just as they did with other ceramic objects they created.

As a postscript to the story it should be noted that Brachman & Massard went out of business sometime around 1897. The Kirkpatrick’s Anna Pottery ceramics continue to elicit great interest and one snake jug recently sold at auction for $83,650, a new record.

Andrew Clemens: He Found a Voice in Sand

2011-10-21T06:50:00.000-07:00

Among American folk artists the work of Andrew Clemens stands out as an amazing story of creativity while working under severe handicaps. Clemons, shown here, was born in 1852 in McGregor, Iowa. As the result of a severe illness at the age of five, diagnosed as “brain fever,” he was rendered deaf and mute for the rest of his life.

At age 13 Clemens was sent to the Iowa State School of for the Deaf and Dumb in Council Bluffs. The school was located in along the drainage of the Bridal Veil Falls near an area of exposed cliffs called “Pictured Rocks.” The sandstone exposed there has acquired a variety of colors from the minerals that have seeped from overhanging rocks and permeated the sandstone.

Clemens saw these sands as an outlet for his artistic talents. As one guide to his work explains it: “Clemens collected the sand from ‘Pictured Rocks’ and allowed the sand to dry. He separated the dry sand into piles of uniform grains of each color. These naturally colored grains formed the basis for Clemens’ sand paintings. To create his sand paintings, Clemens used only a few tools: brushes made from hickory sticks, a curved fish hook stick, and a tiny tin scoop to hold sand.” His simple tools are shown here.

Selecting the appropriate color, he tediously inserted the sand using the fish hook stick, grain by grain, into empty apothecary bottles, The brushes helped keep the picture straight. No glue was used. The sand was held in place only by pressure from the sand layered on top of it. When the picture was finished and the bottle full, it was sealed with a stopper.

His sand paintings included both original designs and reproductions of other images. Some, as three shown here, were created from bottom to top. Some had separate pictures on back and front. Even more amazing were those bottles that required he create his designs upside down. After completion these were sealed, turned over, and stood up on their openings. Few better uses have been found for empty bottles.

Clemens sold his creations in a McGregor grocery store. A small bottle was $1; more elaborate creations might go for as much as $8. He established a customer base among both locals and travelers looking for unusual souvenirs. It is estimated that during his brief lifetime, Andrew created hundreds of sand art bottles of which only about 50 are estimated to have survived. He is said to have created most of them in the six years between 1880 to 1886. Today they can fetch as much as $30,000 at auction. A number are in museums.

Clemens' efforts have never been duplicated. He both invented the art form and is likely its sole practitioner. I have seen sand paintings by American Indians, South Asian holy men, and folk artists. None can compare with the beauty and ingenuity of the designs this artist produced. Thus it is with a certain poignancy that we contemplate the label that was attached to the bottom each sand painting: “Put up by A. Clemens, Deaf Mute.”

Enlisting Uncle Sam to Sell Booze

2011-10-01T08:16:00.000-07:00

In the pre-Prohibition era, it was not unusual for distillers and dealers to conscript the familiar figure of Uncle Sam to merchandise their whiskeys. Shown here are eight examples of trade cards and newspaper ads exploiting the old gentleman’s image in the cause of selling liquor.

There was a good reason to enlist Sam: In 1897 after a Congressional investigation uncovered massive counterfeiting and adulteration of whiskey nationwide, the Bottle in Bond Act was passed and signed into law by President Grover Cleveland. It permitted the marketing of whiskey that would be sealed in bonded warehouses and and sold under proprietary names with a guarantee of integrity from the United States Government.

“Bottled in bond” or “bonded” whiskey was (and still is) whiskey that was produced according to the guidelines set forth in this more-than-century-old statute. The requirements are: 1) whiskey must be stored in a federally bonded warehouse for at least four years before bottling; 2) it must be legally defined straight whiskey and distilled in a single season by a single distillery, and 3) it must be bottled at one hundred proof (50% alcohol).

The government then certifies that the whiskey was bottled at this proof; it also vouches for the aging period. The federal guarantee is symbolized by sealing the whiskey with a green strip stamp on each bottle. In exchange for meeting all these requirements, distillers do not pay taxes on their whiskey until it is bottled and removed from the warehouse for sale. Treasury agents are assigned to distillery warehouses to insure the rules are followed.

In a day when trust in government ran higher than today, the federal guarantee was seen as something to be exploited in merchandising by canny whiskey men. How better to take advantage of “bottled-in-bond” than by appropriating the national symbol?

The W.H. McBrayer trade card depicts the situation in vivid colors. Uncle Sam stands in front of a bonded warehouse, key in hand, as workers withdraw crates of Cedar Brook Hand Made Sour Mash Whiskey. A second Cedar Brook ad has the old gent and his key riding a flying bottle of whiskey and the motto: “Way above everything on earth.” This Lawrenceville, Kentucky, distillery was founded in the late 19th Century by Judge W. H. McBrayer. After his death in 1887, the Judge’s estate went to his grandchildren and their father, D. L. Moore, ran the distillery. The Kentucky Whiskey Trust bought the plant about 1900 and under various managements continued production until Prohibition.

A trade card from the Thompson Straight Whiskey Co. of Louisville, shows us Uncle Sam “Catching the Fakir.” He is peeking through a door leading to a workroom in which a whiskey “rectifier” is pouring a number of suspicious ingredients, represented by bottles on the wall, into a stoneware container. The inference is that Sam will arrest the fakir. Thompson also tells us: “ Uncle Sam says: The Label must tell the truth so always read carefully the label.”

Thompson was in business from 1910 to 1918. The company used the brand names: "Country Club", "Forelock", "Lucky Stone", "Old Kentucky", "Old Medicinal Corn", "Old Mountain Corn", "Thompson Old Reserve", "Thompson Select", "Thompson Straight", "Very Old Special", and "White Bird Gin.”

Steinhart Bros. in an 1890s ad portray a distinguished looking Uncle Sam pointing to one of the many brands they featured as wholesale liquor dealers. It is “Roxbury Rye,” a Maryland-made whiskey of which they had purchased an entire years supply. This firm was highly successful and grew to have outlets in many sections of the Big Apple. Founded in 1872 Steinhardt Bros. succumbed with Prohibition.

The trade card of Uncle Sam holding some bottled-in-bond whiskey in glass containers with one hand and a wooden barrel with the other is presumably from the R. Mathewson Company of Chattanooga. Little appears in normal sources but my surmise is that this brand was produced by the Rufus Rose family of “Four Roses” fame during a brief period 1907-1910 when son Rudolph moved their distillery from Atlanta to Chattanooga. “ R. Mathewson” was Rufus’ first initial and middle name.

The Clarke Brothers, Charles and Chauncey, inherited a distillery business founded in 1862 by their father in Peoria, Illinois, After his death they incorporated the company under their own names. For a time following the passage of the Bottle in Bond Act, they claimed that their whiskey was distilled by the U.S. Government. Probably warned off that approach they subsequently featured Uncle Sam in their advertising, emphasizing, more factually, that the Feds had set a seal on every bottle.

The Turner-Look Co. of Cincinnati provided a list of the brands it sold in an 1897 ad, depicting the American flag and Sam with an umbrella. The text assures customers that quality is assured by “the Best Government on Earth.” This firm were wholesale dealers featuring a wide range of brands. Cincinnati directories indicate that they were in business from 1887 until 1918.

Although Guckenheimer ads often alluded to the bottled-in-bond character of their whiskey, in this one only Uncle Sam appears, holding a scale to demonstrate that Guckenheimer Pure Rye Whiskey has a balance of quality and purity. This Pittsburgh firm was founded by Asher Guckenheimer in 1857. His liquor became a leading national brand after winning top prize at the 1893 Colombian Exposition in Chicago. Following his death family members carried on the business for several years after Prohibition until 1923.

The final example deviates from the mantra of “Uncle Sam guarantees whiskey quality.” The image advertises “Five Jacks” brand from I. Michelson & Bros. of Cincinnati. It is trying to make the point that their whiskey is one “for All Nations.” Uncle Sam is leading the way for Britain’s John Bull, others dressed in national clothing, and a donkey to try
it. This whiskey distributor and rectifier were in business from 1898 until 1918.

Today we are accustomed to seeing Uncle Sam represented in a number of poses, both commercial and patriotic. Since Prohibition, however, he has been strikingly absent from whiskey merchandising even though “bottled-in-bond” has continued unabated.

Whiskey in a Full Metal Jacket

2011-09-16T06:22:00.000-07:00

In December 2010, this blog featured eight metal teapots issued by whiskey distillers and distributors to advertise particular brands. Subsequently additional metal containers issued by the whiskey trade have come to light. In addition to teapots they include metal jugs and metal pitchers. Nine are displayed here, along with information about their origins.

We begin with the jugs and a metallic container that advertises Hinkel Pure Rye. It was as the product of the Mathias J. Hinkel Co., located at several addresses in Cleveland, Ohio, including 461 Pearl (1892-1905), 1778 W. 25th NW (1906-1908), and 814-820 Prospect Av. SE (1909-1919). Since the jug does not bear an address, it is impossible to date it exactly.

Hinkel himself was a native son of Cleveland, born in 1867, who left school at the age of twelve to work as an office boy at Edwards, Townsend & Co, eventually rising to the position of manager of the liquor department. In 1892 he struck out on his own, establishing a wholesale liquor business. Eventually it became one of Cleveland’s largest.

The second jug comes from Sandusky, Ohio, bearing the name of August Guenthur. Guenthur was a self-described wholesale dealer in “fine whisky etc.” The metal container advertises Old Jug Rye, which was a proprietary brand produced by J. & A. Freiberg of Cincinnati. Brothers Joseph and Abraham Freiberg traced the origins of their firm back to 1866. Among a blizzard of liquor brands, their “Old Jug” was the flagship. They issued their own metal jug for Old Jug Whiskey, shown here, but in other instances allowed their dealers to add their own names, as August Guenthur did.

The fourth jug hails from the Kentucky Liquor Company. Despite its name, it appears that this vessel was the product of a liquor company in Chicago. Very little appears about it in the public record, but the firm shows up in city directories, located at 295 Wells Street, from 1892 to 2896.

Whiskey Teapots

Three additional whiskey teapots are shown here. The first is from “Old Elk.” the flagship brand of Stoll & Co. of Lexington KY. The Stoll family, operating under this name, established the Commonwealth Distillery in 1880. There followed a number of ownership changes in which family members took varying roles, including a time when the company became part of the notorious “Whiskey Trust.” In 1902 James Stoll reformed the company and acquired control of several Kentucky distilleries, making it the largest distilling concern in the state. When James Stoll died in 1908, family once more turned over their interests to the Trust.

M. H. Chamberlain & C0. of Detroit saw a real opportunity in issuing a silver plated teapot. Their flagship brand was “Chamberlain’s Silver Rye” and the metal container was appropriate advertising. This firm was founded in 1879 and existed into the early 1900s. Warehouse records show that the company was obtaining whiskey over the period 1901-1904 from the Burks Spring Distillery in Kentucky. Michigan was the first Midwest state to vote Prohibition in and led to the demise of M.H. Chamberlain & Co.

The third teapot is from a firm that had outlets in Fond du Lac and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “Tom Benton” was its flagship brand with others being “Crystal Brook” and “Rosehill.” The originating firm may have been Rahte, Haas & Watke (1891), with the partners eventually going their separate ways, at least two of them, including Albert Watke whose name is on this teapot, claiming the Tom Benton brand.

Metal Pitchers

Two metal pitchers issued by whiskey outfits conclude this post. The first advertises the Zeno brand from one of the feuding McBrayer family. One of the clan's distillery was founded in the late 19th Century by Judge W. H. McBrayer. After his death in 1887, the Judge’s estate went to his grandchildren and their father, D. L. Moore, ran the distillery. This jug, however, may have come from another distillery using the McBrayer name, something that fueled intra-family lawsuits.

The final item is a highly decorated silver plated pitcher bearing an embossed crest and the name Gannymede “76” Rye. It is from Cincinnati, an advertising item issued by Sigmund and Solomon Freiberg, brothers from the Ohio whiskey dealing family and related to J. & A. Freiberg. This company first showed up in city directories in 1899 and from the blizzard of brands it featured appears to have been successful for almost two decades. Gannymede “76” brand was its flagship.

These are just a few of the “full metal jackets” through which American distillers and liquor distributors merchandised their whiskey. A subsequent post will describe and depict others that have come to light.

A New Find: Diamond Club Rye

2011-09-02T07:59:00.000-07:00

One of the more rewarding aspects of this blog, herein marking its 75th posting, is the response from readers who “stumble on it” while researching collectible items on the Internet and send me emails about them, often with pictures attached. One such reader was Greg Johnson of Minneapolis who sent me the picture of a transfer printed mug, shown here. It was one that I had never seen before. Its provenance was revealed from the bottle from which two men, a farmer and a banker, were drinking. This clearly was the handiwork of George W. Meredith.

George’s story begins in Utica, New York, where he was born in April 1850, the son of Thomas and Elizabeth Meredith. Not long after the family moved to Trenton, New Jersey In 1852, the father died. Mother soon followed him to the grave, leaving George a orphan from boyhood. The youth soon abandoned school to learn a trade as a potter and in 1877 moved to East Liverpool, Ohio.

During the late 19th and early 20th Century this town on the Ohio River was America’s largest producer of ceramic table and vanity wares. Known widely as “Crockery City,” in 1887 East Liverpool boasted 270 kilns and annually produced ceramic products valued at $25 million -- in a time when 25 cents would buy dinner. The largest pottery in town was KT&K -- Knowles, Taylor & Knowles, founded in 1854.

After a year working for a small pottery operation, Meredith in 1878 joined KT&K, working in one of the lowlier jobs -- as a jiggerman. This was the relatively unskilled the laborer who turned the potter’s wheel to shape the clay. But the occupation did not suit him and may even have injured his health. After a little more than two years he left the factory, ostensibly on his doctor’s recommendation.

Almost immediately this 30-year-old determined that a far better occupation was making and selling whiskey. The late 19th century was a time when saloons were opening in every city and town. They did not lack for customers. Lots of folks were going into the whiskey business, many as rectifiers -- operations that refined and blended liquors made by others. Meredith was a rectifier. He rented a storeroom in downtown East Liverpool and with one employee began buying grain neutral spirits in large quantities and blending his own brands, adding color and flavoring.

It soon became clear that despite his lack of book learning, Meredith had a real genius for marketing whiskey. Early on, for example, he called his principal brand “Meredith’s Diamond Club Rye.” Diamond Club was the name of East Liverpool’s most prestigious grouping of businessmen. It took lots of nerve for Meredith to associate his liquor with the club and his use of the name raised considerable ruckus around town. Before long, however, Diamond Club whiskey was a big seller, not only in East Liverpool, but in Ohio, and eventually across America. In time the businessmen’s club itself surrendered and changed its name to “Buckeye Club.”

Key to the popularity of his whiskey were Meredith’s advertising campaigns. His signs were painted on barn sides and rock outcroppings for miles around East Liverpool. He maintained a boat that was moored on the Ohio River and carried a mural advertising his products. One hot August day he even distributed hand fans to Temperance marchers that had an plug for his whiskey printed on the back.

Meredith’s knack for publicity was matched by the themes of his advertising. His newspaper ads and container labels insisted that the whiskey was “pure,” once again exhibiting his merchandising savvy. The hottest consumer issue of the decade was the safety of merchandised food and drink products. The Pure Food and Drug Act would be enacted a several years later and “purity” had the same draw as “all natural” does today. Diamond Club’s purity, Meredith announced, made it “the safest whiskey on earth” for medical purposes. He claimed that one “nip” was worth 10 doses of medicine and boasted that his liquor had been “officially recognized” by the medical profession. How and where, he did not elaborate.

By stressing his whiskey’s therapeutic rather than its lubricating qualities Meredith also was attempting to circumvent the burgeoning Temperance Movement. The business of selling “the safest whiskey on earth for medicinal use” expanded rapidly. Within a decade Meredith was one of North America’s largest whiskey distributors, serving a clientele, as he put it, “from Maine to California and Canada to the Gulf.”

This canny, self-promoting businessman also saw the customer appeal that bottling his whiskey in a whiteware china jug might have. He talked his former employers at KT&K into shaping a distinctive container, one with a graceful tapering body, a serpent handle, a fancy over-glaze label and plenty of gold trimming. On April 4, 1891, the East Liverpool DAILY CRISIS ran an ad stating: “The G.W. Meredith Co. is offering its Diamond Club Pure Rye Whiskey in china jugs that will come in three sizes.” The KT&K whiskey jug was launched -- every one of the bearing the message: “Expressly for Medicinal Purposes.” He also approved a striking design for an “1880” Meredith Rye.

As Meredith grew in wealth and prestige, he branched out in East Liverpool, organizing and becoming principal stockholder in the Crockery City Brewing & Ice Company. He also helped found and later became the president of The Colonial Company, a pottery with six kilns. Greg Johnson’s mug bears the Colonial mark, as does a Meredith stein bearing three monks, also shown here.

The town Meredith had adopted as his own ultimately disappointed him. In 1907 the Temperance marchers had their way when East Liverpool by local option voted itself dry.
He retaliated by eliminating the town name from his bottles and jugs and in 1908 moved his whiskey operations to Pittsburgh. After National Prohibition wiped out his liquor business there in 1920, Meredith migrated to Atlantic City, N.J., where he is said to have made another fortune in real estate. He also bottled a soft drink called “Whistle,” an orange-flavored beverage that had been invented in St. Louis just as Prohibition began. He died in Atlantic City in 1924 at the age of 74.

Meredith’s legacy is in the many advertising artifacts he left behind, ranging from a tiny watch fob in the shape of a jug to a giant ornate lamp stand. Greg Johnson’s recent find of the Diamond Club mug is a strong reminder of the genius of this pre-Prohibition whiskey man.

Ludwig Bemelmans: Whiskey and Whimsey

2011-08-18T07:44:00.000-07:00

My earlier post, Dr. Seuss Sells the Sauce” (July 2010), chronicled the beer and whiskey ads created by the famous children’s author. Although Ludwig Bemelmans may not be as well known, his children’s books have been avidly read for decades. Like Seuss, Bemelmans, shown here, used his distinctive artistic style to draw a series of ads for a whiskey maker. His pictures remain a marvelous, whimsical legacy.

Bemelmans, who was an author as well as an illustrator, was born in the Austrian Tyrol in 1898. Employed at 16 in his uncle’s restaurant, he shot a headwaiter in a dispute and the family gave him the option of reform school or emigrating to America. He chose the latter and as he said...” I bought two pistols and much ammunition. With these I intended to protect myself against and fight the Indians.”

After landing in New York City, he soon joined the U.S. Army during World War I, despite just barely being able to speak English. His antics as a soldier, including firing his pistol at unruly prisoners he was guarding, were captured later in his humorous memoir, “At War with the Army.” After the war Bemelmans writings and art began to gain important recognition. It was not until 1934, however, that he published his first children’s book and followed in 1939 with the adventures of a Parisian school girl named Madeline (named after his wife). As shown here, his delightful drawings were an instant success and the Madeline stories became a series, ending only with his death.

As his fame as a children’s author grew, he continued to contribute drawings and writing to national magazines such as Vogue, Town and Country, The New Yorker, Fortune, Harper’s Bazaar, McCall’s, Holiday and Stage. It was perhaps natural then that the Hiram Walker Company of Detroit and Walkerville, Ontario, one of America’s largest distilleries, would tap Bemelmans’ talents for advertising its flagship brand, Walker Deluxe Bourbon. This whiskey for years had featured a black waiter serving whites -- a theme that probably was losing its market appeal as the Civil Rights era dawned.

As a result, from 1957 to to 1959 Bemelmans drew a series of color ads for Walker Deluxe. By my count there were 11 in all, of which 5 are shown here. The consistent theme is the enjoyment of the whiskey by people who clearly are very, very rich, but each illustration has a waggish twist.

The first ad shown here is of a butler taking a nip from the Walker Deluxe bottle. This caused one contemporary observer to ask: Oh, Ludwig Bemelmans, it’s a mere hop, skip, and a jump from little Madeline causing mayhem in the orphanage to butlers helping themselves to a swig from the drinks cart, isn’t it? Please note the dog in the picture at left: His arch attitude mimics the butler.

The next two ads are similar in theme. In the first, a group of three yachtsmen are served whiskey by a cabin waiter. They are clearly on a yacht while in the background their own yachts are anchored nearby. The second features three Texas oil tycoons, hats and shirts of the type, enjoying a drink while in the background their limos and sports cars, with uniformed drivers, await. Snob appeal with a twist.

The next ad features at least four waiters serving a number of gents (no women appear in any of the 11 Bemelmans ads) in an African safari tree house. The waiter at far left, as in the first picture, is helping himself to a nip of whiskey before serving it. Note that no waiter in any of the ads is a person of color. Hiram Walker executives apparently had seen the error in that depiction.

My favorite is the last image. It shows a waiter serving two portly gentlemen sitting beneath the trophies of prior hunting expeditions. Each animal is worth examining for its slightly different expression, ranging from anger to puzzlement. Bemelmans has injected into this scene, just under the rabbit, top left, the framed picture of an elderly woman, probably the mother of one of the drinkers. They apparently see no irony in her appearance among the trophy heads.

During the 1950s Bemelmans became involved in show business, designing the set for a Broadway production and doing several stints in Hollywood. The murals he painted at New York's Carlyle Hotel bar are still prized for their delightful whimsy. He died in that city in October, 1962 at the age of 64.

Ludwig Bemelmans is buried in Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, D.C. There his gravestone records none of his many accomplishments as an artist and writer. It states simply, Cpl.U.S.Army, World War I. Of that service to his adopted country, Corporal Bemelmans clearly was justly proud.

Collecting: A Focus on Fantasy

2011-08-05T14:08:00.000-07:00

Recently on eBay I saw, bid for and won a heavy brass paperweight on a marble slab, shown here. In bas relief It features a bare-breasted young woman holding a bottle high against the familiar Coca Cola logo. Other features are a ribbon on which appear the words “Refreshing and Delicious” and “Atlanta Ga USA.” In small letters in the upper right appear the words “Tiffany Foundry.”

Tiffany Foundry was a enterprise of Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) an American artist and designer, shown here, who worked in the decorative arts and is perhaps best known for his work in stained glass. As a foremost adherent of “Art Deco” -- the design of the paperweight -- he also executed numerous metal work items in his foundry, such as the inkwell shown here. Most Tiffany items fetch high prices.

My paperweight is an interesting and attractive piece. It surprised me then to win it with a bid of $15, the price of a modest lunch. Subsequent research revealed, however, that presumably knowledgeable collectors of Coca Cola items, of whom there are many, consider this object a “fantasy.”

The concept was new to me. After some thirty years of looking at, accruing and writing about collectibles, I have become accustomed to looking out for reproductions knowingly or unknowingly sold as the real thing. There are dozens of “repros” that collectors of expensive glass bottles are aware of. Antique watch fobs with value are reproduced (counterfeited?) so frequently that it plagues the hobby.

But “fantasy” items are not reproductions or imitations. They are described by commentators as items that were not designed or in any way issued by the company advertised. In this case Coca Cola. The question remains whether they were meant to fool collectors. Describing them as fantasies seems to me to avoid the question.

The image on my paperweight shows up in other formats, including a belt buckle and a bracelet, shown here. The back of the belt buckle identifies “Tiffany Studio” and “JJ Willard-Phila” as identifying marks. One Coke specialist says: “Unfortunately these buckles are really worthless...Most experts seem to agree that the value of each buckle range from nothing to no more than $10.” ($5 less than I paid for the weight.)

Presumably these fantasies proliferated at one point in history. Shown here is different Coca Cola belt buckle that also is disparaged by the cognoscenti as a fantasy.

The Tiffany folks for a long time were unsure if their foundry had made the items bearing their name because the records had burned during the 1930s and were unavailable. Eventually they decided that the company had not been involved and identified the items as a fraudulent. In the interim, according to reports, some collectors had been gulled to purchase them to the tune of hundreds of dollars.

My paperweight has a felt base and a sticker label, indicating rather recent manufacture, and a reference to the “The Art Mint, Ltd” of St. Louis, Missouri.” Information on this firm is sketchy. It seems not to exist anymore but produced other novelty objects including resin wizard figures, shown here. They surely qualify as fantasy.

For me the personal question remains: Was I defrauded by paying a modest amount for this object, no matter who made it and when, one that has a elegant Art Deco design and format? I don’t think so. It will keep its place in my collection. Given its strong appeal , it would seem ridiculous, regardless of value, to think of this paperweight as something as flighty as a fantasy.

"Comin' Thro' the Rye"

2011-07-22T11:21:00.000-07:00

In 1782, the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796) wrote a poem that spoke of the sweetness of young love. It is the inquiry of a young swain of his girl friend that if they should happen to meet while walking through a field of grain, and he should kiss her, would her eyes well up in tears? The scene and the verse is shown on a Victorian-era trade card. Ironically, this image was issued by a company selling a laxative called “Sanative Pills.”

Through the years I have collected a number of pre-Prohibition postcards that use the same mantra -- “Comin’ Thro'’ the Rye” -- referring to liquor. Rye whiskey themes show up frequently citing Burn’s lyric and in related guises. The first example is of a well-dressed gentleman with plaid trousers strolling through bottles, flagons and one barrel, all marked “rye.” From the plaid we can assume, I suppose, that he is a Scot.

A very similar image follows. This time the gent is smoking a cigar and from the cut of his jaw the individual is Irish and, under the circumstances, clearly someone who imbibes. The lineup of rye containers he is negotiating includes bottles, flagons and, in this case, two barrels.

In the next card, the barrels have taken the spotlight and the bottles are small. We apparently are looking at a distillery worker who has filled them and is taking them off for sale -- or something. A very similar image was provided by a leather postcard. For a time in the early 1900s leather was a very popular medium for sending images through the mails.

The subsequent card continues the theme. Here the barrels are open and the worker, or a very thirsty person, has by chance or luck fallen into one. In the following card a gent with a top hat has emerged from a barrel of rye whiskey proclaiming that he “arrived here in good spirits.” This card also was tooled on leather.

In the final example, a gent in a vest is resting on a cushion, back to a barrel and sucking from it on a nursing nipple. The container is marked “Fine Old Rye.” Next to him is another cushion and “reserved” nipple. The message is: “I’m saving some for you -- Come on around.”

Rye whiskey cards were fairly common prior to Prohibition. Their frequency was indicative of the strong popularity of that form of spirits for much of the Nation’s history. The fall of rye in popularity with the drinking public since Repeal and the ascendancy of bourbon has been laid to many causes. My own view is that it was not so much the changing taste of the American drinking public as the identification of “rye” with an inferior kind of liquor sold in speakeasies during Prohibition.

The Tile Club: Hi-Jinks and High Art

2011-07-07T14:32:00.000-07:00

In keeping with my strong interest in art tiles, demonstrated in prior posts, I have been fascinated with a decade-long movement of American artists in the 19lth Century to paint on ceramic tiles, a movement that included one of our Nation’s foremost painters, Winslow Homer, pictured here.

The Tile Club was founded in the fall of 1877 in New York by a group of young artists and journalists who had been meeting informally from time to time to discuss art. Homer, an established artist at this point, was a charter member. As it evolved, the Club membership was held to twelve. When members left new ones were admitted by unanimous vote.

The Club was a highly fraternal and cordial type. There were no bylaws, officers, rituals, initiation or other fees. Initially the group met weekly at a member’s studio to, as the name implies, paint on tiles -- something none of them had done before. As detailed in a book by Ronald G. Pisano entitled “The Tile Club and the Aesthetic Movement in America,” the Club jointly agreed to undertake tile decoration and were pleased with the results of the experiment.

Over its life, membership in the Club included such American art luminaries as William Merritt Chase, Robert Swain Gifford, Earl Shinn, John Henry Twachtman, and Julien Alden Weir. Less well known, but charter members, were Arthur Quartly and Charles Reinhart.

In addition to their studio work, the Tile Club took summer outings to the beach, both for camaraderie and to paint. Their hi-jinks and excursions soon caught the fancy of the American press. Scribner’s Monthly of February 1879 featured a story of a Club outing to Long Island that had occurred in June of the previous year. It was captured in a ink drawing entitled “Ye Tilers in Procession.”

Homer (1836-1910) is accounted the most adventurous tile painter of the group. In addition to his use of bright colors on ceramics, he was prolific. Among Homer’s works are six known single tiles, one plaque and two fireplace murals. The first three examples shown here are from the master.

Chase, a young colleague of Homer, would make his reputation as an outstanding American Impressionist. He produced several tiles, including one of an old man in a flat hat, done in 1879, Chase (1849-1916) added his own name into the image before firing it. Today it is in the collection of the Hecksher Museum in Huntington, New York.

Quartly (1839-1886) was an American painter best known for his seascapes. Two of his tiles are shown here, a single tile entitled “Girl on the Beach” and a door panel depicting a fishing boat. Both were done with a limited pallet and indicate Quartly’s fascination with the marine environment.

The final tile is from Reinhart (1844-1896). Born in Pittsburgh, he later operated a studio in Paris. His reputation was largely for his pen and ink drawings many of which illustrated books and other publications of the times. For the Tile Club he created a door panel that included a heroic head and his initials.

With the publication in 1887 of an elegant “A Book of the Tile Club” by its members and the concurrent loss of its meeting place in a New York brownstone, the organization effectively came to an end. In terms of American art history the Club must be seen as a blip on the screen. At the same time the art works members left behind, including a number of tiles, demonstrate that good art can be achieved while having a good time.

Kids Selling Beer

2011-06-18T05:56:00.000-07:00

This post continues my series of images of children employed to advertise unlikely products. In March 2010 I dealt with kids selling whiskey and in October 2010, tobacco. This time the subject is beer.

Although the product being merchandised is different, the rationale behind the use of childhood innocence is the same: The attraction of consumers to a picture of a winsome youngster or two. All the illustrations shown here are pre-Prohibition, i.e., pre-1920. After Repeal in 1934 American mores had changed to the point where no brewery would have felt comfortable using children in advertising. (The Japanese still do.)

A theme that runs through many of these ads touts beer as a health food, safe even for children. Note the Schlitz ad. It shows a tyke of about 5 or 6, carrying a bottle of beer on a tray. In addition to its well-recognized mantra that Schlitz is “The beer that made Milwaukee famous,” the trade card states: “Mama says: It keeps us all well.” The clear inference is that this kid not only serves the beer but drinks it.

Schlitz cross-town Milwaukee rival, Blatz, similarly was pushing the health button. Its trade card features a cartoon tot, popping from a stein and chirping “Here’s good health.” Is the assumption that he has been imbibing in the flagon? The ad also assures us that “Blatz is certainly the finest beer ever brewed.”

The Virginia Brewing Company not only gives us a winsome little lady, but piles on the cute and cuddly by having her push a wheelbarrow holding two puppies. Virginia Brewing was a major beer-making operation, founded in Roanoke VA in 1890. Its Wurzburger Beer was touted as “a family tonic,” again an indication that it could be given to children. The company was shut down by state prohibition in 1916, reopened upon Repeal, struggled, and finally closed in the 1950s.

Vying for the “cute” title is a 1910 Easter greeting card from Buckeye Beer, located in my home town of Toledo, Ohio. If two puppies are fetching, how about four baby chicks surrounding a curly headed urchin? The flip side assured the reader that by drinking two pint bottles of Buckeye beer each day, “you will remain strictly temperate....” Buckeye traced its origins back to 1838. In 1886 the Buckeye name was adopted. The brewery survived Prohibition, for a time produced my favorite home town brew, and then in 1972 went out of business.

The Dallas Beer boys, shown with violin and flute, is more subtle. It has no health claims attached, just that “Mama and Papa” drink it. Demonstrating the value of some of these brewery ephemera to collectors, this card sold his year on eBay for $370. Even more pricey was the winsome, golden haired lassie on a tip tray issued by the Fredericksburg Brewery of San Jose, California. The tray recently sold at auction for $1,000. Founded in 1867 brewery survived until 1918 when closed by Prohibition.

Not all the children are having a good time with their beer. Christian Moerlein of Cincinnati, who often favored hordes of cherubs in his ads, shows a young lady who will never grow up to be a waitress. She has dropped one bottle of Moerlein beer and a glass to the floor and seems in danger of losing a second. Moerlein began by brewing beer in the back of his blacksmith’s shop during the 1840’s and saw the business become one of the Midwest’s largest. Under different ownership, the brand is still sold today.

Not only breweries exploited childhood images as a merchandising gimmick, local saloons did as well. Fred Pfalzgraf featured this trade card of a quartet of juveniles romping amidst the waves, apparently in Baltimore harbor. Just why two of them are wearing stocking caps in the surf is not apparent.

The final image in this series of kids selling beer is perhaps the most perplexing. It shows a scantily clad, evidently post-pubescent young girl fishing in a pond with what appears to be a butterfly for bait. It is an ad for the Adams Ale House of Concord, New Hampshire. Unfortunately one must assume that all involved in creating and distributing this image have long since left mortal life. Otherwise a question: “What exactly were you thinking of?”

The Vernacular Art of Cast Iron Bottle Openers

2011-06-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

American vernacular art, according to experts Frank Maresca and Roger Ricco, often has a utilitarian purpose or origin that serves as a springboard for individual imaginations. Their book, American Vernacular: New Discoveries in Folk, Self-Taught and Outsider Sculpture,
includes a number of machine-made objects in order to drive home that point.

In that vein I have been fascinated by the variety and creativity embodied in cast iron bottle openers. They are far from being antiques. Most were manufactured in the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s. Although the openers were cast from standardized molds, they were hand-painted by workers who often gave them individualized “personalities.”

The first group of castings shown here depict openers that were meant to be attached by nails or screws through holes in the ears to a wooden shelf or other surface. Maresca and Ricco mark the particular importance of sculptured faces in a contemporary times when most facial representations are two-dimension photographs. They believe three dimensional visages provide an important “presence” that photos cannot.

That may be the reason why the three faces shown here are so compelling. The four-eyed man, for example, shows up in a number of shapes and sizes with his teeth the hook for bottle caps. Seeing double he is a warning against overindulgence in alcohol. The Goofus face, another popular bottle opener, by contrast seems to be encouraging us with a wink to “let the good times roll.”

The top-hatted man with the sour look generally is known as “Mr. Dry” and comes in a variety of shapes, sizes and coloration. He is a Prohibitionist advocate and his frown greets anyone uncapping a beer bottle on his face. While the origins of many of these cast iron objects are unknown, “Mr. Dry” was created by Wilton Products, Inc., of Wrightsville, Pennsylvania.

The Wilton family began casting metal along the Susquehanna River in 1893. It was not until about 1935, however, that the company, presided over by a Wilton heir, began producing hand-painted cast iron objects, including bottle openers, trivets, candle holders and a wide variety of novelty items. These were most popular during and after World War Two.

Another popular sculptured opener is a figure at a sign and/or lamp post. Often he is a drunk as indicated by his posture -- clinging to the post for dear life -- and an “x” over his eye. Less common is an item depicting a New Orleans hooker, provocatively showing a suggestive amount of ankle and thigh. The woman with the rolling pin obviously is waiting for her drunken husband to show up. Note that the hook of the opener is located at various points on the posts.

Mermaids are another popular cast iron format. Two are shown here but the variety is substantial. My hunch is that mermaids give an excuse for crafting a figure with bare breasts. After all it is largely men who are looking for a way to pop the top on their brewskies.

The black boy with the alligator nipping at his pants also comes in several variations. This bottle opener has an action quality that makes it particularly appealing. Using the Maresca/Ricco criteria, this object, like others shown here, would qualify as a vernacular American art. Moreover, all are eminently collectible at reasonable prices.

As can be seen on several of the openers shown here the original paint over time and with wear often tends to flake off, leaving the bare metal below. In fact, if an casting is too perfect in its appearance, it may be a reproduction or a repainted item. In the case of American vernacular, a la Maresca and Ricco, some damage or flaws would seem to enhance the artistic value.

John Lobmiller and the Whiskey Shakes

2011-05-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

John Lobmiller was a glassmaker and inventor from Wellsburg, West Virginia, whose most memorable contribution to mankind may well have been a paperweight that contained shakable bar dice.

In 1885, together with other Wellsburg investors, Lobmiller founded the Venture Glass Works in that Ohio River town. According to an 1886 newspaper account. the glassworks specialties were brown flint glassware and private mold work. The article praised the operation: “These works are operated with natural gas, and while the establishment is not quite so large as some others, the work turned out is equal to those of more metropolitan pretensions.” The enterprise apparently succeeded to the extent that Lobmiller would marry Cora Nelson of Wellsburg in 1898.

As an inventor, Lobmiller had a number of ideas to improve existing tools and artifacts. In 1901 he filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office an application to make a new kind of paperweight. Most weights of the time were solid glass with an image pasted or sealed in the base. Lobmiller created a paperweight of glass and metal with a cavity. His application noted that “moveable devices of circular or other form can be confined in the cavity....” Such devices, he noted, would add “novelty and attractiveness” to weights.

Two years later, on August 18, 1903, the U.S, Government issued Lobmiller his patent. There was an immediate interest in the invention from a source that Lobmiller may or may not have had in mind. Although his illustrations show small marbles in the cavity, whiskey dealers and saloonkeepers saw the open space as perfect for holding bar dice.

Shaking for drinks at the bar is an American tradition almost as old as the Republic. Patrons gamble against the bartender or against each other on who picks up the drink tab. Bar dice games typically are played with a set of five six-sided dice. Each player takes a turn rolling the dice either to outdo opponents or to accrue points.

Pre-Prohibition whiskey distributors like Harald Schmidt in Indianapolis (1903-1918) were quick to see the advantages of Lobmiller’s invention. The paperweight with dice would advertise Schmidt’s Fairmont Whiskey, reminding patrons of its availability behind the bar. In Memphis, Tennessee, Italian immigrant Dominic Canale had the same idea. He distributed five-dice paperweights to those saloons carrying his “Old Dominick” whiskey. Canale’s company (1885-1915) also featured brands, “B-Wise” and “Dominick Special Rye.”

On Milwaukee’s South Side, George Frank ordered up Lobmiller paperweights for his drinking establishment on National Avenue. His “sample room,” a high flown name for a saloon, is now the site of an apartment building. The base of all three of these weights bear the Lobmiller patent date. It is unclear but likely that they were fabricated at his Wellsburg glassworks.

In addition to the artifacts featuring a round cavity inside a square glass, a second Lobmiller patent variety was a broader, round paperweight. This is exemplified by the Clingstone Rye weight, shown here, one that also bears the 1909 patent date. This item was distributed by the Shiff, Mayer Co. of Cincinnati, in business from 1906 until 1911. Clingstone Rye was its flagship brand.

Lobmiller’s success almost inevitably drew copycats. Shown here are three whiskey weights, all probably from the same manufacturer and all bearing a “patent applied for “ designation. No evidence exists of a patent actually being granted, not surprising given how close the concept was to Lobmiller’s. Among the whiskey merchants making use of this “knockoff” were the Old Kentucky Fine Whiskey Co. of Kansas City, Missouri (1900-1902) and Winner Rye, the product of Wm. Mulherin & Sons, Philadelphia (1887-1918). A third was a weight advertising Pennsylvania Pure Rye. It is unusual because it features only three dice. This weight was distributed by Buffalo, New York, whiskey rectifiers known as C. Person’s Sons Company (1850-1920).

Despite the interesting legacy of whiskey memorabilia that John Lobmiller made possible, his own life apparently was plagued with difficulties. He committed suicide in Wellsburg in 1913. An obituary in a glassworkers trade paper cited “business troubles” as the cause.

Jug Bands

2011-05-06T07:15:00.000-07:00

As the Marty Python crowd used to say, “Now for something completely different.” Well, not quite. This blog is mostly about bottles and booze and a post about jug bands fits both. For example, the Old Grand-Dad Jug Band, shown here on a early 1900s post card, was an advertisement for whiskey.

The names of this ensemble are lost in history but the brand they were merchandising lives on. Old-Grand-Dad bourbon was the product of a Marion County, Kentucky, distillery founded by the Hayden family about 1785. A grandson, Raymond Hayden, took the operation into full-scale commercial production when in 1882 he built a distillery at Hobbs Station in Nelson County.

When Raymond died without heirs the distillery was sold. Over the years it went through several ownerships until Prohibition in 1920 shut the plant down for good. The brand name has continued to be perpetuated to this day, reputedly using the original Hayden formula. By employing a jug band to merchandise Old Grand-Dad in the pre-Prohibition era, the distillers were clearly appealing to an African-American audience. Early jug bands typically were black.

Their instruments were a mix of traditional: fiddle and guitar -- and homemade: washboards, tubs, and, of course, jugs. The last was essential. Its swooping sounds filled a musical niche somewhere between a trombone and a tuba. Usually stoneware and sometimes glass, a jug is played by buzzing the lips into the mouth to play low and mid-range harmonies in rhythm. Experts could achieve two octaves, controlling changes in pitch by altering lip tension.

Jug bands clearly had a certain commercial appeal. Schlitz, a nationally known Milwaukee beer of German heritage, issued a trade card for its five-man jug band. The brewery clearly saw this ensemble as a good marketing image for its sales of Schlitz in Africa-American communities. Like the Old Grand-Dad band, this one was left anonymous. A recent CD release uses the same picture on the cover, however, and identifies the group as the Memphis Jug Band, one the most famous of the genre.

This ensemble was organized by singer-guitarist Will Shade. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, he lived there virtually all his life until he died in 1966. Other members of the band over the years included Ben Ramey, Charles Polk and Will Weldon. Between 1927 and 1934 the group recorded nearly 75 musical numbers whose up-tempo rhythms continue to delight. The Memphis Jug Band also is shown here in a later photo and in a color illustration by the famous American illustrator, R. Crumb, himself a passionate fan of blues, jazz and early country music.

Not just alcohol fueled the use of jug bands in commercials. Here are shown five musicians, with a prominent jug, called the Ballard Chefs Jug Band. They were regulars on Louisville radio station WHAS-AM. It broadcast their weekly program from the 1920s through the early 1930s over the Eastern half of the United States, sponsored by the Ballard Flour Company Fiddler Henry Miles was the leader. The legendary Earl McDonald for three years (1929-1932) did vocals and extraordinary jug-blowing.

After a period of neglect, during the folk music fever of the late 50s and early 60s jug bands revived. Most of them featured white musicians. Shown here is the Jolly Joe’s Jug Band. It was founded by record collector and music impresario Joe Bussard. The jug being used by Joe’s band, a 20th Century cylinder of stoneware, seems mighty puny compared to the earlier bands.

Fishing with Whiskey

2011-04-22T05:31:00.000-07:00

One of the more imaginative ways that liquor companies have employed to advertise their products is by giving away fishing lures. It makes sense. People who fish -- particularly the men -- are also likely to imbibe alcoholic beverages from time to time, sometimes even while fishing. Who, for example, would embark on a day long day of fishing without at least a six pack in view?

Recognizing this market, distillers have issued a number of lures over the years, ranging from the practical to the absurd. Among the former is the crippled minnow lure from Early Times Bourbon. A classic, vintage shape, it is a medium-running lure, designed to hook anything from a muskie to a bass.

One of the earliest brand names in American whiskey history, Early Times Bourbon was founded by John H. Beam, uncle to the famous Jim Beam, near Bardstown, Kentucky in 1860. The distillery changed hands several times before Prohibition. After Repeal in 1934 Brown-Foreman Distillers bought the entire stock and the brand name. The lure probably dates from the 1950s when Early Times was the best-selling bourbon in the country.

The Old Charter lure is another example of a classic American fishing plug, sold in the past under various names, including “Pico Bayou” and “Boogie Perch Lure.” At 2 and 1/2 inches long and deep-running, however, it was meant for larger fish than perch and probably had its greatest use in angling for large mouth bass.

Old Charter is another historic whiskey brand name. Adam and Ben Chapeze, of French descent, first began distilling in 1867 at a Kentucky site called Chapeze Station. It took them another seven years to decide to call their liquor Old Charter Bourbon. The brand changed owners several times in the 1800s and ended up with Wright & Taylor before Prohibition. Subsequently the whiskey has had several ownership, including Schenley Industries and United Distillers.

With sport fishing a major industry in their homeland, Canadian distillers have been major contributors to whiskey lures. Shown here are three baits that were issued by Royal Canadian Whiskey. They include, from top, a bass spoon, a spinner, and a crippled minnow. Even today no respectable tackle box should be with a version of each.

Royal Canadian was a brand from the Hiram Walker family of whisky (as the Canadians spell it). Described as medium-bodied and advertised as “rich and rare,” this blend had considerable success in the U.S. and foreign markets until production ceased about 1995.

Bass spoons were a favorite distillery giveaway because the company name could easily be accommodated on the back. Gooderham and Worts, a Canadian firm with worldwide liquor interests, provided a golden lure with the slogan “Just for Luck Try a Nip” of its Old Rye. The American-made Ezra Brooks Bourbon provided a red and black bass spoon to its Isaac Walton adherents. To my knowledge, both whiskeys are still being made. Several years ago I witnessed fifths of Ezra Brooks being bottled and cased at the Heaven Hill Distillery in Bardstown.

From serious fishing equipment, we move to the semi-ridiculous. Four liquor companies issued items with the shape and label of their bottles. As my father often said: “Some lures catch more fishermen than fish.” The examples shown here would seem to bear out that insight.

The final whiskey lure is from Jim Beam and is thoroughly absurd. It features a 1 and 1/2 inch can of Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey Cola. with a spinner on top. This probably should hang from a Christmas tree rather than from the end of a spinning rod. Beam, named after the famous Jim, is probably the world’s best known bourbon. The distillery traces its origins to Beam’s grandfather who sold his first barrel of whiskey in 1795.

Whiskey-issued lures were, in retrospect, a useful advertising gimmick for distillers. Some had practical uses; others were meant to amuse one’s fishing buddies. All of them probably should bear a warning label: “When you reach for that nip, take care the rowboat doesn’t tip.”

Heinrich Schlitt and the Family Stein

2011-04-09T08:23:00.000-07:00

The picture of the gnome shown here demonstrates the artistry of an almost forgotten German artist whose major legacy was decorating drinking vessels, as I found out recently in researching a beer stein that has been in my family for more than 60 years.

The artist was Heinrich Schlitt, who was born in 1849 in Biebrich-Mosbach, now part of the German state of Hesse. The son of a civil servant, Schlitt was drawn to art from his youth. In the early 1970’s his career took him to Munich, the capital of Bavaria where he found considerable success. Because of his attraction to humorous and fanciful topics, his paintings and illustrations were popular. He frequently featured German folk characters such as fairies and gnomes.

In the late 1800s Schlitt joined the ceramics firm of Villeroy and Boch (V&B) in Mettlach, Germany, where he produced many designs that come to life as the illustrations for beer steins. His signature graces many of the company steins of that era.

Enter my family. Sometime in the 1940s my father did favors for a neighbor who repaid him by a gift of a beer stein. It was prominently displayed in our home for almost 40 years. Upon my father’s death, I inherited it. Only relatively recently, however, did I attempt to establish its provenance by writing the V&B museum in Germany.

The curator, Ester Schneider, wrote me documenting that the stein dates from about 1901 and was designed by Schlitt, whose signature appears on the vessel. Shown here from two angles, the lidded stein depicts the Grimm Brother’s folk tale of the Seven Swabians. These lads were the German equivalent of “Dumb and Dumber.”

Frequently depicted by German artists, as in this postcard view, the Seven Swabians decided “to travel throughout the world seeking adventure and performing great deeds,” according to the Grimms. For this crusade the company obtained a sword long enough that all seven could take hold of it at once. Encountering a rabbit on their journey all were very afraid that it was a monster but gripped the weapon and charged. To their relief, the rabbit ran away.

On the family stein, however, Schlitt depicts the Swabians as older and preparing to eat a rabbit for dinner. Over a boiling pot, the long spear holds a lantern to light the scene for the cooks as the seven settle in for an evening meal. The artist returned to the Swabian theme frequently in his designs for V&B steins, including very tall drinking beer steins.

As he grew older Schlitt, described by contemporaries as “a kindly wizard” and “jolly and full of fun,’” became increasingly lonely, eccentric and depressive. His photograph shown here, said to be only one of two known to exist, shows a man who seems distinctly unhappy at being in the lens. Schlitt died in 1923 and was buried, together with other honored Munich artists, in the Waldenfriedhof Cemetery.

Today Heinrich Schlitt’s drawings, oils, watercolors and murals receive occasional notice in the European art world. He is best known and remembered, it appears, by collectors of beer steins worldwide. As one American writer has expressed it, the artist is cherished for his “...wizened visages of avaricious gnomes, mellowed by just a tinge of wry good humor; the anthropomorphic treatment of beer-mugs and pretzels, sausages and steins, devils and playing cards, towers and trees.”

Stein collectors are said to greet the name “Heinrich Schlitt” with shouts of ecstasy. If that is an exaggerated commentary, they have certainly elevated the prices on his V&B designs. I am looking at the Schlitt Swabian stein these days with new appreciation and a resolution to keep it in the family.

Old Goats and Bock Beer

2011-03-25T13:28:00.000-07:00

For hundreds of years a particular brew known as “bock beer” has been symbolized by images of a goat. The concept arose in Germany and many theories have been put forward about why this sweet dark beer, usually produced and consumed in the Spring months, might have seized on this particular animal as a icon.

Some say that the word “bock” comes from the medieval German brewing town, Einbeck (pronounced “Ein-bock”). Others claim it comes from the Hindu language. Whatever the origin of the name for this heavy dark lager beer, it has traditionally been advertised as represented by this ruminant. Pictured here are eight goats, all of a pre-Prohibition vintage, as depicted in trade cards and posters advertising bock beer.

Perhaps the most fascinating is an anti-Chinese trade card for bock beer from 1879. It shows a pigtailed Chinese gentleman being bowled over by a long-horned goat as onlookers raise a glass and laugh. In the background goats are chasing other Chinese. There is no any indication of the brewery that issued the card. The design is from a A.J. Mare of Brooklyn NY. Although anti-Chinese feeling was common in the period, it is a mystery to me why this image was believed to sell beer.

In bock ads, however, goats regularly are knocking people down or doing other destructive acts. A white goat knocks over a black waiter spilling his highball and martini glasses while a comely white girl looks on with her tray of beers intact. Again no brewery is advertised. The lithography company cited is from Baltimore. My reading of this image is that during bock season beer is ascendant over mixed drinks.

The rambunctious goat is evident again in a poster for G. F. Burkhart’s Bock Beer. This time he is chest butting a well-tailored gentleman who is attempting to quaff some brew. The man stands amidst beer barrels and a group of 10 celebrants, at least several of whom seem to be inebriated. Note that at rear among the group is gentleman of color waving his hat.

This image dates from 1877 and was the art work of Charles Wellington Reed (1841-1926), an American artist and lithographer famous in his time for his illustrations. Burkhardt’s Ale and Lager Beer Brewery was located in Boston where it made beer in two massive six-story buildings. Founded in 1850, it survived until the coming of Prohibition.

Artist Reed also did a bock illustration for Burhardt’s Boston competitor, H. & J. Pfaff Brewing Co. Its 1877 poster shows a group of men surrounding a beer keg, out of which a goat is charging. Several hold glasses and are trying to catch the spurting suds. Pfaff began his brewery in 1857. He too was put out of business by Prohibition. Today his facility houses the Roxbury, Mass., Community College.

The violent goat may be contrasted with a more genial animal, one often depicted in the company of a pretty girl. An 1882 bock trade card shows a goat dancing with a girl, both of them brandishing beer glasses, while a second goat plays the fiddle. The dance theme is carried forward in a poster of the same vintage that features a pretty waitress, with overflowing tankards in hand, dancing on a beer barrel with a very attentive goat . No brewery is mentioned. This goat conjures up the image of the satyr, the Roman mythical half man/half goat who frequently is seen in erotic juxtaposition with attractive, loosely clad or nude women.

The satyr implication is even more evident in a 1900 bock beer trade card from the George Winter Brewing Company. Here the goat, whose male characteristics are very evident, is gazing longingly at the maiden carrying a goblet of beer. Or is it the beer that excites him? The Winter brewery, as noted on the card, was located on 55th Street in New York City. City directories of the time indicate that Winter himself resided at 42 Avenue A in Manhattan.

The last bock image shown here is a generic bock poster from a Newport, Kentucky, lithography company that could be hung in a bar window. It dates from around 1912. A young woman and goat sitting are on the wing of a airplane, the suds flying off their beer glasses. Because air travel was a novelty, this scene probably was very trendy in the early 20th Century.

To this day the goat continues to be the symbol of bock beer, to be seen on many a current label. For the most part these contemporary animals are relatively docile creatures. For that reason, I much prefer the “old goats” of pre-Prohibition days.

A Second Look at the Irish

2011-03-11T07:01:00.000-08:00

Last year in March my blog was entitled “No Irish Need Apply.” Written as an antidote to the sentimentalism that often attends St. Patrick’s Day, that article featured images of Irish immigrants looking like monkeys, planting explosives, fighting with police, and in general posing a threat to American society.

In this blog I attempt to show the progression that sentiments about the Irish underwent from the late-19th to the early-20th Century. A reminder of the bestial and dangerous Irishman is an 1880s trade card advertising the New Home Sewing Machine Co. It shows a simian-like man pouring a glass of whiskey while tending a range of explosive materials and devices.

The Free Home Co., creator of the card, was founded in 1882 and boasted a New York City address. Acquired by another manufacturer in 1927, products were sold under the Free Home name until 1957. My assumption is that prejudice against Irish was so strong at the time that this image was believed to sell sewing machines.

An early St. Patrick’s Day card echoes the notion of the Irishman as a ruffian and a drunk. Note the bottle sticking from his coat pocket. Although the dynamite and bombs are missing from the portrait this is still a dangerous individual. That it is tied to a St. Patrick’s greeting makes it all the more offensive. Just bit more refined, is a “Dear Oirish” postcard of the same era. Both the monkey look and the whiskey jug are evident.

Pond’s Extract was a patent medicine that claimed to cure everything from influenza and hemorrhages to chilblains and hemorrhoids. With an address at 76 Fifth Avenue in New York, the company issued a trade card in 1892 purporting to show an Irishman “bound for Donnybrook Fair” -- an event in Ireland known for being rough and rowdy. Although his looks have improved, this Paddy still wields a club and carries a flask of booze. He is said to be “fully equipped.”

A second postcard from that same year has more complex message. On once side is an American Indian; on the other a elderly man with a pipe. The legend reads: “The Indian with his pipe of peace will soon pass away; But the Irishman with his piece of pipe will last for many a day.” I have seen other cards with the same rhyme. The message seems to be that neither ethnic group was desirable, but the Irish were now the larger problem.

Even so, the image of the Irishman was changing. A 1907 St. Patrick’s card shows a well-dressed, polite son of Ireland, tipping his hat and calling out, “Top of the mornin’ to you.” This was the work of Ellen Hattie Clapsaddle (1865-1934), an American illustrator/commercial artist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One of the most talented and prolific postcard and souvenir illustrators of her time, her cards set a tone for an upscale depiction of the Irish.

Within a few years postcards were depicting Irish in an angelic mode. Gone are the club and the whiskey, although the clay pipe remains in the picture. A 1914 card shows an Irishman on angelic wings who is being carried up to the Pearly Gates. The legend tells us “An Irishman dies every time they are short an Angel in heaven.”

The final card, vintage the 1930s, shows the Irishman as arms-around firm friend of Uncle Sam. Their flags fly together amidst the shamrocks. Drink is back but in a decorous fashion. The two raise a glass to the bond between the two countries and peoples -- a far cry from the image produced by the New Home Sewing Machine Co.
The progression from the monkey-faced, drunken and destructive Irishman took several generations to reach the well-clad, genial one of more recent times. The scary immigrant of old morphed to a staunch American fully in the embrace of our national symbol.

What was responsible for the change? I believe the sheer numbers of Irish-Americans and their relatively rapid rise economically in the United States. In America a few bucks in the pocket can result in an ocean of respect.

New Find: Sherwood Bros. Jug from Nebraska

2011-02-25T05:27:00.000-08:00

For some 34 years, I have been keep track of American ceramic whiskey jugs and have written two books about them, as well as having collected and viewed hundreds of examples As a result, it is very unusual to be presented with a jug that I have never seen before, particularly one that was produced by a pottery about which I have written extensively.

That is exactly what happened in January 2011 when John Bass of Redding, California, emailed me a picture of a ceramic whiskey, shown here, one completely unknown to me. The the shape and decoration on the jug are exactly the same as a jug from the Wm. Edwards Co. of Cleveland, Ohio. That jug was featured in my blog of November 2009. Both ceramics are marked as the product of Sherwood Bros. of New Brighton, Pennsylvania. Mr. Bass’s jug, however, advertises Country Club Bourbon from E.E. Bruce and Co. of Omaha, Nebraska.

Mr. Bass sent me the picture after seeing my article on Sherwood Bros. pottery. The bottle clearly was well traveled from Omaha. It had been owned by his mother in California. She told him that it had been given to her 40years earlier by her mother-in-law in New Mexico. That lady claimed that the ceramic was then 100 years old. The dating was not quite correct. The ceramic whiskey now is more than100 years old and can claim antique status but it was not quite that vintage when his mother received it. The dating, however, does not compromise the uniqueness of this new find.

Who was E.E. Bruce and his company? Shown here, Edwin Estelle Bruce was a leading druggist and businessman in Omaha. He opened an wholesale drug business in 1887, accounted by contemporaries as “one of the finest in the West.” His company occupied a four story building in Omaha. Like many other drug companies, Bruce’s firm also sold a line of whiskey -- the flagship brand being Country Club Bourbon.

Not only did E.E. Bruce order a whiskey bottle from Sherwood Brothers, he also employed jugs from the famed Redwing potteries of Minnesota. A two-gallon Redwing jug bearing Bruce’s logo is shown here. Made rich by his drug and liquor business, Bruce occupied a Georgian Revival mansion, located in Omaha's Gold Coast neighborhood. He also was well-known in Omaha business circles, according to a contemporary account, respected for his ability, enterprise and ingenuity.

Presumably as a result of this reputation, Bruce was tapped by the elite of the city to be a principal officer for a world’s fair known as the Trans-Mississippi International Exposition. This event was inspired by leading Nebraskans to illustrate the “progress of the West,” highlight the 24 states and territories west of the Mississippi River, and meant to spur economic development. Held a mere five years after Chicago’s highly successful1893 Columbian Exposition, the Exposition ran from June to November 1898.

Bruce held the pivotal position of Exhibits Manager for the Exposition, an extravaganza that covered 108 city blocks in Omaha and involved 4,062 individual exhibits. The success of his efforts can be measured in the 2.6 million people who visited during the six month run of the fair. Constructed quickly of flimsy materials, none of the Exposition buildings survives today. Bruce’s mansion still stands. Moreover, we can remember this Omaha druggist and whiskey dealer by the ceramic jugs, including a new find from Sherwood Bros., that are part of his legacy.

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Black Waiters: "Fetch, Toby, Fetch"

2011-02-11T06:05:00.000-08:00

Last year about this time, as an observance of February’s Black History Month, I featured a blog about the way African Americans have been depicted in whiskey advertising throughout the years. Many of the images proved to be degrading or at best depicted blacks in menial or serving positions. This year my Black History blog will concentrate on blacks in wait service.

Here my conclusion is that whiskey ads often treated black waiters with more dignity before, rather than after, Prohibition. A case in point is an 1894 advertising poster issued by a Cincinnati-based railway that also featured a number of products manufactured in the city. The dignified waiter holds on a tray a bottle of Cabinet Whiskey he is offering to two passengers. This whiskey was a product of the Freiberg and Workum Co. (1855-1918). From distilleries in the company owned in Kentucky they produced and distributed a number of nationally-known brands.

Similarly dignified is the waiter who is serving 15-year-old Old Fitzgerald whiskey to a passenger in an individual small bottle on what the ad claims is one of “the best Railroads in the United States.” This is a 1901 ad from the S.C. Herbst Importing Co., headquartered in Milwaukee with a branch office in Chicago. Founded in 1870, the Herbst organization survived until Prohibition.

Contrast those first two examples with a post-Prohibition1935 ad from Paul Jones whiskey, a brand was from Frankfort Distilleries. Founded after the Civil War by Paul Jones, a whiskey salesman, the company moved to Louisville, Kentucky, in 1886. Frankfort Distilleries survived the years of “Dry” (1920-1934) becoming one of the few outfits that were allowed to produce “medicinal” whiskey under government permit. Providing a quarter of the national supply, the company boasted that 20,000 doctors had written prescriptions for its “spiritus frumenti alcoholic stimulant” -- the word “whiskey” having been banished.

After Repeal, Frankfort Distilleries had a head start on its competition. It funded national ad campaigns that harked back to a pre-Civil War era when plantation owners could sit, smoke cigars and tell the obsequious waiter, “Toby, fetch me the key to the springhouse.” The gentleman at left in the ad was supposed to be the redoubtable, but now long dead, Paul Jones himself. The message here was clear: Let us celebrate the good old days when slavery was in flower.

Other ads emphasized the subordinate nature of the black waiters by giving them ungrammatical speech patterns. Cream of Kentucky “Thee” Whiskey, for example, featured an ad in which a waiter holds a bottle in one hand and a drink in the other. He declaims: “De Kunnel sez Mint Julep.” This brand originated with the Rush Distilling Co. of Jacksonville, Florida.

Similar illiterate speech appears in a 1940s ad from Sherwood Rye. The smiling waiter here tells us “Ain’t had time to sit me down, since Sherwood Rye done come to town.” The same rhyming waiter in another Sherwood ad -- not shown here -- says: “De man who calls for Sherwood Rye, sure knows the bestest brand to buy.” Sherwood Distillery was founded in 1882 in Cockeysville, Maryland. The original operation was closed with Prohibition and the buildings destroyed in 1926. However, the brand name survived and was produced post-Prohibition until the 1950s from a facility in Westminster, Maryland.

Calvert Whiskey took a two page ad in Life Magazine in 1941 to show a black waiter with two whiskey collins on a tray. His speech is grammatical but his manner is a wide grin that communicates how happy he is to be serving. Originally part of the Fleischmann distilling operation in Relay, Maryland, the Calvert facilities and brand name were purchased in 1933 by the Canadian Joseph E. Seagram and Son.

A final example is from Walker’s Deluxe straight bourbon. From 1947 to 1953 this brand featured the same very distinguished black waiter, usually holding a tray on a bottle of the whiskey. Although there was nothing particularly servile in this waiter’s attitude, the ad-makers in one 1953 instance could not avoid the temptation to picture him in front of an old Southern plantation house -- once again harking back to those pre-bellum days. The brand was from Hiram Walker of Detroit and Walkerville, Ontario.

Since the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s, a half century ago, the depiction of black waiters has disappeared from all U.S. whiskey advertising. Other things have changed as well. Now a highly educated, articulate African-American is in the White House. Toby need no longer fetch.

Bottles, Booze and Warhol

2011-01-28T06:12:00.000-08:00

If a painting of one Coke bottle is worth $35,360,000, then by inference could a painting of 210 Coke bottles by the same artist be worth $7.4 billion? Shown here is a single Coke by “Pop” artist Andy Warhol that recently sold at auction for that eight figure sum. While not a record for a Warhol (his multiple Elvis sold for over $100 million), the sale still created shock and awe in the art world.

Warhol is enjoying huge attention for his paintings, particularly those done in the last years of his life when he seemingly “sold out” to commercial interests. In Milwaukee last year I caught a glimpse of a Warhol “Last Decade” exhibit that eventually made its way to the Baltimore Art Museum.

Viewing this display, a Washington Post art critic opined: “By the time he died in 1987 at age 58, Warhol had turned selling out into his principal art form. He held a mirror up to our sold-out commodity culture by selling himself as a cultural commodity. This launched a major movement in art.”

Whatever its true importance, Warhol’s production also met the criteria of this blog: It encompassed bottles as well as booze. Among Andy-Pop artworks are ads he produced for Martini and Rossi Vermouth in a four part series that ran in U.S. magazines from 1954 to 1963. They used a “blotted line” technique that became identified with the artist. Shown here in tandem are two of the ads, one of which featured a Warhol self-portrait. My favorite follows: A scene in Venice with gondola and a bright red sun. And, yes, a bottle of vermouth.

Just as notable were a series of ads Warhol created for Absolut Vodka. This was the product of Sweden’s Ahus Skane distillery, with origins in 1879. In 1985 the vodka brand commissioned Warhol to do a color ad that has remained an icon. The artist went on to do several other Absolut ads featuring bottles. With the launch of Absolut’s lemon-flavored Citron in 1988, once again Andy obliged, this time presenting bottles with evident erotic properties.

There is no question but that Andy Warhol has set the bar high for future artists to depict liquor bottles. All future efforts may well seem derivative of this master.

Having started with Andy’s multimillion dollar depiction of a single Coke, we end with another Warhol. This one shows 210 Coke bottles on a wall. I counted them. As suggested earlier, could it possibly be worth billions? Maybe it could be sold to help pay off the national debt.

Whiskey Risque'

2011-01-15T13:16:00.000-08:00

Sex sells -- the ad man’s adage. Several past blogs have dwelt on the use of racy images to grace a saloon (Feb.’10) , merchandise a whiskey brand (Sept.’09), or flog a patent medicine (July’10). When reviewing risqué methods of selling whiskey in the pre-Prohibition era, however, clearly lots more can be said -- and illustrated.

Some of America’s best known brands, including ones that have survived to this day were prone to use the female figure in various states of dress and undress to advertise the virtues of their liquor. A vintage trade card from Old Crow depicted two women, one smoking and both in skimpy outfits. It took little imagination to understand in what profession they were engaged. At this time Old Crow had just come under the control an ownership that combined Kentucky elite distillers and New York money men. The rise of this brand can be traced to aggressive advertising of this kind.

Isaac Berheim and his brother, Bernard, started a wholesale liquor company in Paducah, Kentucky, in 1872. In 1888 he moved to Louisville, bought the Pleasure Ridge Distillery and made a whiskey he called “I.W. Harper,” still a well-known brand. The Bernheim’s built their business by vigorous advertising, including the use of colorful trade cards. Shown here is a double-entendre view of a young stud grabbing at either whiskey or a girl with a low bodice. The caption states: “He won’t be happy ‘til he gets it.”

Risque pull-off and folding trade cards were a staple with the pre-Pro whiskey men and the Bernheims gave the world a prime example with pull-off gown revealing another low bodice, a bottle of whiskey, and a corseted lady of indeterminate occupation. The Puritans were known for being, well, puritanical. Puritan Rye’s fold-out dancer, however, is giving us a good view of her bloomers. I have seen several of these cards and inevitably they develop a hole at a particularly unfortunate place. This brand was the product of David Sachs & Co. of Louisville (1872-1919), whiskey blenders,bottlers and dealers.

Kentucky was not the only source using sexually appealing images to boost whiskey sales. Cincinnati, an Ohio river town even Carry Nation couldn’t shut down, fostered its own set of risque advertising. In those days displaying a female in a state of partial undress was more acceptable if shown in an exotic setting. Hence a picture of a bare-bosomed slave girl serving a statuesque woman in a transparent robe. Clearly this is the Middle East--or is it? The slave has a bottle of Old Windsor Whiskey in her hand, the product of Cincinnati’s Frank G. Tullidge & Co. (1868-1911).

The harem motif also was employed by the Mayer Brothers of Cincinnati (1882-1918) for a trade card merchandising its nationally sold Hudson Rye brand. Closed the card bears the words “Snuff” and “Take a Pinch.” It opens to disclose, not tobacco, but a Middle Eastern odalisque lounging on a divan. Thereby is raised a question: Are we still allowed a pinch?

The Rosenfield Brothers of Chicago (1893-1902), owners of two Louisville distilleries featured three unclothed lasses, with more apparently to come, and found no need for an exotic setting. These ladies appear to be cavorting in a good old American waters without any sign of Victorian modesty. It occurs to me that they had found Rosenfield’s “Sunny Brook” and “Willow Creek” in more ways than one.

The last in this cavalcade of fleshiness comes from the Budweiser Saloon of Springfield Illinois, John Zimmerman Jr., proprietor. The lady appears fully dressed but her fish hook has snagged her dress, revealing --my goodness -- she wears no underclothes. Perhaps even more intriguing is the caption: “Open All Night.” The implications are endless.

A Tempest of Whiskey Teapots

2010-12-29T14:08:00.000-08:00

Pre-Prohibition whiskey distributors ranged widely in their attempts to merchandise their products through imaginative give-away items to saloonkeepers and the “faces along the bar.” Among the most unusual advertising items were metal teapots inscribed with the whiskey brand name and often the liquor company that produced it.

This blog is devoted to eight such teapots with some speculation on their creation and use.

The first four teapots shown here are from Cincinnati, where the idea may well have originated. In the late 1800s and early 1900s major whiskey distillers, rectifiers and distributors abounded in that Ohio city. For example, in 1881 the 10 leading Cincinnati distillers announced that their production for the prior year was 1.8 million gallons on which $103 million in taxes had been paid. Competition was fierce. As companies vied for market share, they found lots of inventive ways, including metal teapots, to keep their name before the drinking public.

Keystone Rye, the name inscribed on a silver-plated example, was the product of Klein Brothers, a Cincinnati distillery that Samuel Klein founded about 1875. Klein proved to be an excellent merchandiser and the source of such brands as Keystone Rye, Harvard Rye and Spring Lake Bourbon. His whiskey became nationally and even internationally known. He also was famous for his innovative give-away items, among which his teapot must be accounted as particularly unusual.

Sam Klein had formidable competition in a former grocer named Ferdinand Westheimer. In 1879 Westheimer founded a wholesale liquor store in St. Joseph, Missouri, gradually bringing three of his sons into the business. Very successful, particularly with his house brand, Red Top Rye, Westheimer eventually bought the Old Times Distillery in Louisville, Kentucky, and opened a outlet in Cincinnati. Westheimer’s teapot was made in Cincinnati by the Queen City Silver Company, operating from 1888 to the early 1900s.

Joining in this storm of teapots was Charles M. Pfeifer who founded a Cincinnati whiskey distributorship in 1882. His flagship brand was Billy Baxter’s Best, the name he had engraved on a silver plated teapot by the Cincinnati-based Homan Silver Plate Company. This item can be dated with some accuracy because Homan used this specific name only from 1896 to 1904.

Rounding out the Cincinnati quartet was Shields, May & Company, whiskey distributors and rectifiers who featured some dozen different brands of whiskey. Because a San Francisco firm had registered the name “Old Judge” with the Federal government in 1902, it appears that the company was seeking to avoid a lawsuit by labeling this product as Shield’s Old Judge Whiskey. According to its base mark, the teapot was made by the Columbian Silver Company.

Further south in Ohio, another competitor with a regional market for its whiskey also was offering customers a teapot. Founded in 1879 by George Lang and brothers William and Charles Schenck, their whiskey rectifying and distributorship flourished. Occupying a three-story building immediately adjacent to the Columbus, Ohio, courthouse, Lang, Schenck Co. featured Olentangy Rye as its flagship brand.

Herman Abraham, a whiskey dealer whose city of origin I have not been able to identify, used a teapot to advertise two brands he offered. The first, Home Comfort, was from the Joseph Herrscher Company of San Francisco (1907-1916). The opposite side advertised Guckenheimer Rye, from a Pittsburgh distiller that began business in 1857.

A teapot advertising Tom Benton Whiskey hails from a Wisconsin, dealer. His name -- A. (for Albert) F. Watke -- appears on the other side of the metal vessel. Watke appears to have begun business in Milwaukee in 1897 and moved north to Fond du Lac after 1902.

Finally, a silver plated teapot exists marked Sherwood OPS (Old Pot Still) Whiskey. It was the product of Sherwood Distilling of Cockeysville, Maryland, with offices in Baltimore. The distillery was founded in 1883 and within a decade Sherwood Rye became a nationally known brand. This teapot was the product of the Meriden Silver Plate Company (1869-1898) of Meriden, Connecticut.

With one exception, all these firms and brands disappeared early in the 20th Century, most because of the onset of state or National Prohibition. As a result each of these metal teapots can be dated before 1920. The only brand name to survive the 14 year drought was Sherwood, but the whiskey was produced at a different site by new ownership.

What were these metal teapots used for? My guess is this: Because it was not unusual in those days to mix hot water with rye and bourbon whiskey, these items might have been used by bartenders to hold boiled water until called for by a customer to lace his toddy. But this is just a guess. The saloons might even have been serving tea. Naaah.

A.E.T. - A Tale of Tempting Tiles

2010-12-18T12:38:00.001-08:00

For many years I have been fascinated by decorated tiles as a ceramic art form. My temptation to collect them has been tempered by the high prices achieved by the most attractive and desirable art tiles. A notable exception are the products of the American Encaustic Tiling (A.E.T.) Company of Zanesville, Ohio. They are unusually attractive but remain for the most part modestly priced and, for me, tempting.

Because of its proximity to supplies of high quality clay, Zanesville for three centuries has been a hub for ceramic production. The A.E.T. factory was founded in 1875 by E.H. Hall, who named it and shortly after disappeared from the scene. Subsequently the pottery was purchased by New York investors who hired competent management and talented artisans. Originally committed to floor and other utilitarian tiles, about 1880 A.E.T. began making art tiles through its encaustic process. It involved complicated procedures in which powdered clays of different colors were pressed together to form a pattern or design.

Herman Mueller, a noted innovator in art tile techniques, was hired in 1887. He had the ability to produce large relief tiles, panels of female figures, and portraits. Next to climb on board A.E.T. was Karl Langenbeck who some believe was the greatest ceramic chemist America has ever produced. Sales soared. Outgrowing its facilities, A.E.T. in 1892 built a brand new plant, shown here, and bragged that it was the largest tile factory in the world. More than 20,000 people attended the opening, led by then Ohio Governor William McKinley, later to be a U.S. President. The company issued a special ceramic for the occasion.

Through the years this factory produced art tiles by the tens of thousands. Early on the themes tended to be classical ones, like the mural shown here, attributed to Herman Mueller. Another traditional example was the Diana Huntress figure. A.E.T. designers also showed a sense of humor in tile depicting frogs and other animals. As the art deco age dawned, A.E.T. adjusted to more modern styles. Despite being made for the masses, A.E.T. products are held by leading art institutions. The Brooklyn Museum, for example, has a major A.E.T. collection and displays it online.

A.E.T. had a remarkable 60 year life span during which it continued to produce both household and artistic tiles. The pottery’s ability to change with the times is evident in two windmill tiles shown here, one traditional from the 1880s, another modern from the early 1930s. With sales falling rapidly during the Great Depression, however, the Zanesville plant was forced to close in 1935. Today the A.E.T legacy can be counted in the many highly desirable artifacts still within the price range of most collectors.

Whiskey and Opera: Wooing the Fat Cats

2010-12-03T06:37:00.000-08:00

While much of the lore of whiskey in the U.S. involves log cabins and pioneers hacking down trees and plowing the land while cooking up a brew of bourbon in the back yard, the truth is more complicated. As early as the immediate post-Civil War era the money men of Wall Street had a deep interest in investing in distilling. For example, Edson Bradley, a Connecticut blue blood, was the driving force behind the success of Old Crow, a product of Frankfort, Kentucky. He became one of the wealthiest men in the country.

These financial “Fat Cats” often were patrons of the arts, including the opera. They were anxious to take whiskey out of the back woods and into high society. What better way than to identify their money interests with their cultural proclivities. As a result, a whiskey ads and artifacts from 1950 to 1980 not infrequently reflected opera themes.

Take for example the Seagram’s VO ad shown here. The headline reads: ”Roundly applauded by the Met’s first nighters.” In other words, the”creme de la creme” who could afford those steep ticket prices. The opera they appear to be watching is may actually be a operetta about the Canadian mounties called “Rosemarie.” The setting belies the reputation of Seagram’s famous owner, Samuel Bronfman, as crude whiskey robber baron.

A 1959 ad from Fortune magazine for Martin’s whiskey depicts the after-the-curtain-falls party in which the tuxedos and gowns mix happily with the cast members still dressed for the stage. Here the opera appears to be Pagliacci with the principals in their clown costumes. The tag line suggests: “When the grand gesture is expected...Martin’s 12-year-old.”

Schenley Canadian Whiskey, a best seller in the U.S. since Prohibition, featured Opera Star Ezio Pinza in a 1950 advertisement. Pinza had become well known to the American public by appearing in the smash Broadway musical “South Pacific.” Apparently a bit nervous about seeming too high brow, the Schenley ad pictures Pinza in a cowboy hat -- obviously trying to straddle the line between high culture and the high plains.

The “Men of Distinction” series by Lord Calvert, another Seagram’s product emphasized that their whiskey was “intended expressly for those who appreciate the finest.” Among the cognoscenti apparently was John Donald Mackenzie Brownlee (1900-1969), an Australian who was principal baritone at New York’s Metropolitan Opera from 1937 to 1958. He was famous for his performance as the Count in the “Marriage of Figaro,” playing opposite Ezio Pinza in the title role.

Although one has to look hard to find the mention amid plugs for Columbia Records, an ad for Imperial Whiskey, another Canadian product, featured Bidu Sayao (1902-1999). She was a Brazilian born lyric soprano who sang at the Met -- sometimes opposite Pinza and Brownlee -- from 1937 until her retirement from the stage in 1952.

Jim Beam, a true Kentucky product, may have gone the furthest in its effort to connect whiskey with opera. Over a period of several years in the late 1970s and early 1980s it issued a series of decanters containing Beam whiskey for the benefit of several opera companies. Among them was the Australian Opera. It received some proceeds from the sale of a replica of the Sydney Opera House.

The Chicago Opera was the beneficiary of a series of decanters in the shape of leading opera figures including Don Giovanni, Mephistopheles (from “Faust”) and Figaro from “Marriage of Figaro.” Each of these included a gold stand in held a music box that played a song from the opera. The whiskey-filled decanters also came with a “mini-me” -- a smaller solid ceramic figurine that mimicked the decanter. Shown here is the small Mephistopheles. It could be used as a paperweight. Although many Beam bottles are virtually worthless (see my blogs for September and November 2009) these items sell for upwards of $175.

There you have it: The odd couple --whiskey and opera -- a marriage born of the moneyed classes desire to link booze with culture.

Looking at Label Under Glass

2010-11-19T06:22:00.000-08:00

During two years as a curator/cataloguer for the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum in Alexandria, Virginia, I was able to see and handle some of the museum’s large collection of “Label Under Glass” bottles, similar to those shown here. I found them an interesting artifact of a bygone era.

Label Under Glass bottles were most common from the mid 1800s to the early 1900s. They were used for storage of many medicinal solutions employed by pharmacists of the time. The bottles featured an ornate, often gold leafed, label that was covered by a thin layer of glass to prevent damage. Then the glass-covered label was pasted to a bottle with an appropriate indentation to permit a smooth front. As objects they were attractive as well as functional and they dressed up a pharmacy.

Hair products and barber bottles also made use of Label Under Glass as shown in this Wildroot Dandruff and Eczema bottle from the Wildroot Co., Inc. This company was founded in the Buffalo New York in 1911. It registered the trademark “Wildroot” with the government in 1932. Who can forget its catchy jingle: “Get Wildroot Cream Oil, Charlieeee.” The company was sold to Colgate-Palmolive in 1959.

The contents of the Wildroot bottle shown here could have been drunk as well as slathered on the head. The label announces that it contained not more than 40% grain alcohol. That is 80 proof, about the same as some gin. That note takes us to another industry that made use of Label Under Glass to merchandise its products -- whiskey distilling.

The first example are three winsome lasses advertising Galaxy Whiskey. They appear on a back of the bar bottle, a finely lithographed image covered in clear glass. This whiskey was the product of the Peter McQuade organization of Brooklyn, New York. It registered the brand name with the government in 1905. McQuade also merchandised another alcohol-laced beverage under the name “Amazon Bitters.”

Kit Carson Whiskey featured a Label Under Glass bar bottle that featured the American explorer and Indian fighter with his horse. It was the product of Wood, Pollard & Co. of Boston. Founded in 1881, the company was supplied with whiskey product from the warehouses of the Mayfield Distillery in Kentucky. Kit Carson was only one among more than a dozen Wood, Pollard brands. They included “Very Old Cabinet 1873,” “Oxford Rye,” “Snowdrop Gin” and “White Wheat Whiskey.”

Chris Sandheger emigrated from Germany to the United States about 1853 when he was 21 and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. After serving as an accountant in a liquor store, in 1857 Sandheger established his own liquor business. Under his management the firm grew steadily and his alcoholic brands found a wide local and regional trade. His “Peach and Honey” shown here was a cordial. He gave its bar bottle not only a distinctive Label Under Glass, but also wrapped it in wicker.

Sandheger was a rectifier, not a distiller, obtaining his whiskey from Kayser Distillery and other Kentucky producers. Following his death in 1906 family members continued the business until shut down by Prohibition. Among their brands were “Old Sandheger Club,” “Old Still,” and “Stone Lick.”

Prohibition brought an end to fancy bar bottles. Too many of them had been filled by saloon keepers with phony liquor after their initial pouring. Federal laws now prohibited them. Thus bar bottles with Labels Under Glass can easily be identified as pre-Prohibition.

Label Under Glass also was frequently used for whiskey flasks, often provided for special occasions. Among them were the National Encampments of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), the Union soldier veterans organization. In 1895 I.W. Harper, a brand of the Bernheim Bros. issued a special Label Under Glass flask to mark the event, held in Louisville, Kentucky, home town of the whiskey makers.

Another flask honored the veterans of the Spanish American War. The label depicted a soldier and a sailor in full combat gear of the times. The bottle gives no evidence of where or by whom it originated. The final example is among the most intriguing. The glass-fronted label shows a young woman in an abbreviated costume and high heels who is striking a provocative pose. The flask was issued by the Emrich Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., which might have been signaling the nature of its clientele. Like the two prior flasks it also is pre-Prohibition.

Label Under Glass bar bottles and flasks are avidly collected. The Emrich Hotel bottle, for example, recently sold at auction for $190. Condition is often an issue with these items. As seen on some bottles here, the glass cracks or the glue holding the label to the glass surfaces discolors. It is virtually impossible to find one in perfect preservation. Nonetheless, even damaged bottles are pricey. By contrast, Label Under Glass apothecary bottles and jars, although frequently collected, seldom fetch more than $50 and often less.

Who the Heck Was Irvin S. Cobb?

2010-11-05T05:30:00.000-07:00

Once he was among America’s top celebrities: author of 60 books, he was America’s highest paid journalist, a star of radio, motion pictures and the lecture circuit. More celebrated in his time than Jay Leno or David Letterman in ours, he hosted the Academy Awards in 1935, received the French Legion of Honor, and two honorary doctorates. A bridge over the Ohio river, parks, a major hotel, and a brand of cigars were named after him.

Yet today, little more than 60 years after his death almost no one knows who Irvin S. Cobb was or what he did. If for nothing else he should be celebrated for his role in repealing the Prohibition amendment to the Constitution.

Irwin Shrewsbury Cobb was born in his grandfather’s house in Paducah, Kentucky, in 1876, shown here in postcard view. At the age of 16 he was forced to quit school to support his mother and siblings. By the age of 19 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country, working for the Paducah Evening News. Moving to the Louisville Evening News, he gained attention for a humor column entitled “Kentucky Sour Mash.”

Encouraged by the success of his column and encouraged by his wife, he headed to New York City to make his mark. In the Big Apple he eventually landed a job with the New York World and within months was writing a nationally syndicated column, one that eventually boasted readership in the millions. H.L. Mencken, who came to regret it, once compared him to Mark Twain.

As native Kentuckian, Cobb was steeped in the taste and lore of whiskey. As shown here in a movie still, drinking often was a feature of his film roles. At the height of Cobb’s popularity in 1920 National Prohibition was enacted. At first he dealt with it humorously, writing that: “Since Prohibition came in and a hiccup became a mark of affluence instead of a social error as formally, and a loaded flank is a sign of hospitality rather than of menace, things may have changed.”

That jocular attitude had vanished by 1929 when Cobb wrote the only American novel devoted to the American whiskey industry. Entitled “Red Likker” and featuring a map of Kentucky on the cover, the book tells the story of an family that founded a distillery called Bird and Son right after the Civil War. It traces the history of the business to Prohibition when, like most distilleries, it was forced to close. Ultimately the distillery is destroyed by fire and the family is reduced to to running a crossroads grocery store.

Not only did Cobb inveigh against Prohibition in his literary works, he made it a personal crusade. Joining a national organization called the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, he became its chairman of the Authors and Artists Committee. Under his vigorous leadership the committee ultimately boasted 361 members, including some of the nation’s best known figures. As chairman, he blamed Prohibition for increased crime, alcoholism, and disrespect for law. “If Prohibition is a a noble experiment,” he said, “then the San Francisco fire and the Galveston flood should be listed among the noble experiments of our national history.”

When Prohibition finally ended in 1934, Cobb was recognized for his contribution. The first night liquor became legal, he reportedly went to a hotel bar that once again had begun pouring, pulled out a $20 bill and hollered: “Drinks for everyone.”

Immediately after Repeal the whiskey industry feared that the buying public no longer knew how to make mixed drinks. The result was a plethora of drink recipe books. When newly revived Frankfort Distillery wanted one to plug its brands, it turned to Cobb. He obliged with a pamphlet in which he claimed, somewhat fancifully that one of his ancestors, Dean Henry Cobb, an immigrant from Ireland, in 1636 was the first publican licensed to draw spirits in the New World. He also described a great-grandfather who went west to Kentucky and founded “Squire Cobb’s Tavern” along the Cumberland River, a business Cobb claimed the “squire” abandoned one step ahead of the sheriff.

During the late 1930s and early 1940s, Cobb’s reputation plummeted as racist themes came to the fore in his writing. In 1941 his national column was canceled. Increasingly in ill health, Cobb died at age 68 in 1944. He was buried with a simple headstone in a Paducah cemetery. The inscription reads “Back Home.” The memory of Cobb’s life and fame quickly faded. The products to which he gave his name are no longer sold.

Perhaps the most enduring monument to a man who helped rid the Nation of Prohibition is the Irvin S. Cobb bridge. It is a two-lane span that carries U.S. Route 45 over the Ohio River from Brookport, Illinois, to Paducah. Motorists complain that it is a bumpy ride.

Seeing Whiskey Through a Reverse Glass

2010-10-22T05:56:00.000-07:00

Reverse painting on glass consists of applying paint to the back of a piece of glass and then viewing the image by turning the glass over and seeing it through the glass. This art form has been around for centuries. It was used for sacral paintings in the Middle Ages and frequently was used for gilded images.

“Verre eglomise,” as the French call it, had something of a renaissance during the 1800s and early 1900s, used by both artists and by the fledging advertising community in Europe and the United States. Quick to see its commercial value in merchandising were American whiskey distillers and dealers. An attractive reverse glass sign in a saloon might entice more customers to imbibe their product.

I find these signs among the most attractive artifacts that the pre-Prohibition whiskey-makers have left to posterity. My favorite is the elegant “art nouveau” sign from John A. Dougherty’s Sons of Philadelphia. The elaborate “W” in “whiskey” is particularly decorative.

This distillery was founded by John Alexander Dougherty, a native of Ireland who arrived as a youth in Philly in 1814 by way of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Originally a baker, Dougherty eventually moved to making whiskey and in 1849 founded the distillery that bore his name. He had several sons who, upon his death in 1866, continued the business until Prohibition.

Pennsylvania was a state that seems to have fostered elegant glass signage. The second example, also from Philadelphia, is redolent with gold. It advertised a distillery founded in 1874 by Angelo Myers. Framed in gold, the sign also features two medallions that commemorate gold medals the whiskey had won at national expositions. This firm, with Myers father and son as presidents, survived 44 years before Prohibition closed its door. Quite unusually, two of four Myers’ one time corporate officers were women.

A third Philadelphia sign advertised the “Army and Navy Whiskey” from the James Moroney Co. A wholesalers and importer, Moroney founded his firm in 1875. Other brands he featured were “Moroney Pure Rye,” “Old Navy,” and “Round the World Scotch.” The company closed in 1918.

In Pittsburgh, the Joseph S. Finch & Co. was founded in 1873 to great success and made its “Golden Wedding Rye” into one of America’s best known brands of whiskey. It was responsible for two elegant reverse glass signs, one that screamed gold and a second that replicated its Golden Wedding logo. In this case, we know the identity of the creator of at least one of the signs. The back of the first, faint but visible, is written: John Golding Glass Sign, 240 Pearl Street, New York.

Although Hill Side Rye is advertised as being Pennsylvania whiskey, the brand actually was distributed by a New York City based outfit (1880-1918) known as Steinhardt Bros. There were four of them - Lewis, Henry, Morris and David. Together they forged a highly successful whiskey business. Not distillers, they collected whiskey from a variety of sources, “rectified” (mixed it) and sold it nationally and from outlets in New York under a number of brand names, including “White Lily Pure Rye,” “Emerald,” and “Lafayette Club.” This sign bears the signature of artist Thomas G. Jones of New York.

Unlike most of the distillers and wholesalers above, Pfieffer Bros. were relatively latecomers to the whiskey business, first opening their doors in 1902. Rectifiers and wholesalers, their glass sign features the firm’s flagship brand, “Silas Moore.” Pfieffer Bros. also sold their whiskey under brands names such as “Dixie Belle,” “Old Cornelius,” and “Tom Hudson.”

Pfieffer Bros. and the other whiskey companies cited above successfully were in business from the time of their founding until National Prohibition. This time spread makes it virtually impossible to date exactly any of these signs. Not so with the company that produced the final example shown here. “Royalty Club” was a brand name of the Anton Friedmann company in Cincinnati, Ohio. City directories first show Friedmann’s organization in 1870. By 1874 it had disappeared.

Although reverse glass advertising signs are still being made, many of them attractive, our legacy from the pre-Prohibition whiskey makers set an artistic standard that will be difficult to match--ever.

Kids Selling Tobacco

2010-10-08T14:01:00.000-07:00

Last March my blog concerned the dubious use of children in order to sell whiskey through trade cards and ads. More recently I have become interested in the frequent use of youngsters, up until a few years ago, to sell tobacco products. The interest was kicked off by a 1890 ad for Mail Pouch chewing tobacco, shown here, that featured a laughing baby in diapers and the double entendre caption, “He just found his mail pouch.”

Perhaps West Virginia’ most famous consumer product -- one whose faded ads can still be found on thousands of barns across rural America -- the company began with brothers Aaron and Samuel Bloch, who ran a small grocery and dry goods store in Wheeling on the Ohio River. They also had a small cigar factory on the second floor. They conceived the idea of flavoring the scrap cuttings that were left over from the cigars and selling them in paper bags as chewing tobacco. Thus an industry was born.

The brothers had excellent marketing sense and built the company to national fame. Aaron was succeeded as president in 1902 by brother Samuel, who in turn passed the company along to his son, Jesse Bloch, in 1937. Jesse’s son, Thomas took over in 1947 until the firm was sold in 1969. Mail Pouch chewing tobacco is still being sold.

By using a baby to advertise their chew tobacco the Blochs were only emulating a wide range of tobacco manufacturers who used the images of children to sell their products. In a blog in June 2009, I related how Richard Outcault, the creator of Buster Brown, franchised several cigar makers to use his child cartoon character in their merchandising. One colorful label showed a man blowing cigar smoke from his ears, to the clear delight of Buster and his dog, Tige.

Subsequently I have found four more cigar makers using kids to flog their products. The most interesting are Nabob Cigars. Their box lid features a pair of boys, one white, one black, both in tattered or ill-fitting clothes. The white lad is smoking a cigar and clearly enjoying the experience. The black youngster seems to be wishing too he had a cigar.

Three other lids feature little girls and were sold under childish names. “Toto” seems to have sprouted butterfly wings. “ Lulu” is an preschooler with a shawl and heavy coat. “Elsie” is hatless and leaning on a well. Neither of the latter two looks particularly happy. Were these the children or perhaps grandchildren of the cigar makers? My research has found no answer.

A happier tobacco-selling tike was featured in a trade card by the G. W. Schreiber Co. of Philadelphia, a dealer in tobacco and “segars.” Why a tike catching an eel in a net should be considered an apt selling point for tobacco products escapes me, other than the general idea that images of children catch the attention of consumers.

These images, however, pale before a 1951 series of ads for Marlboro Cigarettes that ran in a number of national magazines. In them a series of super cute infants relate messages for both Mom and Dad. To Mom, the toddler had a question: “Can you afford not to smoke Marlboro?” And a second baby admonishes: “Before you scold me, Mom, maybe you better light up a Marlboro.” Dad got no questions, just approval for always smoking the infant’s choice.

Given what we know today about the dangers of smoking, these ads, particularly the Marlboro campaign of almost a half-century ago, may seem like something out of the Dark Ages. Today it would be unthinkable to merchandise tobacco using kids. But not so long ago....

Snakes in Clay

2010-09-24T06:54:00.000-07:00

Right now somewhere in the Carolinas, I believe a potter lovingly is molding a snake onto a ceramic jug or pot. Although he assumes a ready sale for this work of his hands, the artist may be unaware that he is following a tradition almost 500 years old. In fact, this year is the 500th anniversary of the birth of the artisan who early conceived the idea of creating snakes in clay.

His name was Bernard Palissy, French, born in 1510. Shown here, Palissy was a early biologist during a period of great interest in the natural world. Also a potter, he made casts of actual specimens of animals and sea life and reproduced the forms on ceramic platters. Rampant on his dishware are fish, frogs, lizards, crayfish, shellfish, and -- most prominent -- snakes.

Palissy’s pottery developed a cult following in Europe and America during the 1800s. Many potters copied his plates and created ceramics in his “rustic” style. Two Americans were among them. In 1859 Cornwall Kirkpatrick (1814-1890) and his brother Wallace (1828-1896) founded the Anna Pottery in the southern Illinois town of Anna. Although their production included a wide range of ceramic items they have become best known for their snake jugs. Two shown here are among several dozen known specimens.

The traditional view of the Anna Pottery snake jugs has been that they were a temperance artifact and a warning against strong drink. More recent interpretations, with which I am in accord, have a different view. They point out grotesque, sexual and scatological aspects of the jugs, their humor and satirical “over the top” style. Moreover, the Kirkpatricks regularly supplied ceramic jugs and other containers for the whiskey trade. The conclusion is that the Anna snake jugs really are an attack on Victorian values and that the brothers were, like their contemporary Mark Twain, misanthropic humanists.

Whatever their motivation, the Kirkpatricks created snake jugs that fetch tens of thousands of dollars in the rare instances when the ceramics come up for sale. They also inspired generations of future potters to create serpent-featuring jugs, right up to our own time. Shown here are three contemporary examples.

The first is the product of W.A. “Bill” Flowers. Flowers, a North Carolina resident, specializes in ash glazes that impart a “tobacco spit” look to his ceramics. His jug shown here features a single large, smiling snake that seems to be guarding the contents of the jug.
The originator of the second ceramic is Marvin Bailey, a folk potter and artist from South Carolina. He works with salt glazes and often uses color to “dress up” his reptiles. His jug appears to bear the replica of a coral snake.

The third contemporary jug shown here is by a Kansas City artist, who signs his work, “W. Painter.” Known particularly for his mini-jugs, Mr. Painter is a student of earlier potters like the Kirkpatricks and tries to recreate their techniques and motifs. He has given his jug a surface approximating tree bark and looped a thin snake around it that eventually becomes its handle.

The tradition Bernard Palissy began a half millennium ago still is being carried on in small ceramic studios throughout America. For a long time to come we can be assured of viewing snakes in clay. Of Palissy himself, after a lengthy career as a favored potter to royalty, an intemperate outburst led to his being thrown into the Bastille. Although the French king offered Palissy freedom if he would recant, he refused and died in a dungeon cell in 1889 at the age of 80.

H. L. Mencken and Monticello Rye

2010-09-09T16:41:00.000-07:00

Known widely as the “Sage of Baltimore”, H.L. Mencken was the most influential American commentator of the first third of the 20th Century and a man of strong opinions, pro and con, about almost everything. One of his strongly positive views was of Maryland rye whiskey. Of those, the brand name that most often came first to his mind -- it was his father’s favorite -- was Monticello Rye.

This brand was the original product of Malcolm Crichton, who was born in Illinois, the son of a Scottish-born wholesale grocer, about 1840. Moving to Baltimore, Crichton took over a defunct distillery, rebuilt the facility and began producing a whiskey he called “Monticello Rye.”
The 1880s was one of rapid growth as Monticello Rye rapidly became a popular national brand. Under the slogan, “Its All Whiskey,” ads trumpeted the purity and medicinal value of Crichton’s rye whiskey. Distributors like Loeb-Lion-Felix in New Orleans and Peter Welty in West Virginia featured the brand.”

Mencken contended that a friend “always ate rye bread instead of wheat because rye was the bone and sinew of Maryland whiskey -- the most healthful appetizer yet discovered by man.” This was clear to the Mencken family physician, Dr. Z. K. Wylie. According to Mencken, the good doctor “believed and taught that a shot of Maryland whiskey was the best preventive of pneumonia in the R months.” Mencken’s father Augustus, a cigar manufacturer, was entirely convinced. Moreover, when the senior Mencken sent out for whiskey, he wanted Monticello Pure Rye. His famous son recounted:

“His...bill file shows that on December 27, 1893, he paid Courtney, Fairall & Company, then the favorite fancy grocery fancy grocers of Baltimore, $4 dollars for a gallon of Monticello whiskey...Before every meal, including breakfast, he ducked into the cupboard in the dining-room and poured out a substantial hooker of rye, and when he emerged he was always sucking in a great whiff of air to cool off his tonsils. He regarded this appetizer as necessary to his well-being. He said it was the best medicine he had ever found for toning up the stomach.”

When Malcolm Crichton died in 1890, it appears that none of his four sons were interested or equipped to take on the business. By 1892 M. Crichton & Co. had disappeared from Baltimore city directories. But as often was the case with popular brands, the Monticello name lived on. Thomas G. Carroll & Sons of Baltimore (1872-1919) added “Monticello Whiskey” to its own brands. By 1903 the rye brand was being produced by a new Baltimore-based firm called The Monticello Distilling Co.

Baltimore distilling came to a screeching halt with the coming of Prohibition in 1920. Mencken abhorred it. “The chief argument against Prohibition is that it doesn’t prohibit” he commented. “This is also the chief argument in favor of it.” The author personally responded to the “Great Experiment” by selling his car and using the proceeds to purchase a large stock of “the best wines and liquors I could find.” We can guess Monticello rye was among them. Mencken stored them in a basement vault in his home whose door bore a custom-painted sign emblazoned with a skull and crossbones. The sign said: “This vault is protected by a device releasing chorine gas under 200 pound pressure. Enter at your own risk.”

No one celebrated the end of Prohibition with more gusto than Mencken. A photograph on the front page of the Baltimore Sun showed him downing the first beer to be poured at Baltimore’s Rennert’s Hotel bar in 13 years. “Pretty good. Not bad at all,” the paper quoted him saying. But he complained about paying higher prices for liquor after Repeal. Now, he contended, Monticello Rye cost $3 to $3.50 a quart -- not the $4 a gallon his father had paid.

After Repeal, the brand survived, at least into the 1940’s, the vintage of the Monticello mini-bottle shown here. In 1967, after the deaths of Mencken and his brother left their Hollins Street house empty, Baltimore citizens interested in turning it into a museum found in the cellar numerous full bottles of whiskey and wine, as well as a few empties. There is no written record to reveal if Monticello Rye was among them, but we may be excused for believing so.

Hunting for Hugo Thuemler

2010-08-27T06:06:00.000-07:00

In the early 1980s as a collector of ceramic whiskey jugs, I bought a canteen-shaped porcelain bottle advertising Puritan Rye, a whiskey from D. Sachs Company of Louisville, Kentucky. On the base was a round pottery mark for the Thuemler Manufacturing Company. It took me more than 20 years to research this firm and its founder, Hugo Thuemler.

During the hunt I discovered something quite unexpected. Thuemler made only a limited number of whiskey jugs -- perhaps as few as four -- but designed and produced scores of different beer steins and mugs for the American brewing industry. He also created them for root beer makers, fraternal groups, tourist attractions, and conventions. Because the company ceased with Thuemler’s death in 1908, every one of these ceramic drinking vessels legitimately can claim the status of antiques.

Hugo Thuemler was born in 1847, almost certainly in Germany. During his youth German manufacturers had developed a process of transfer printing that allowed more mass production of decorated steins. Exactly when Thuemler arrived in the U.S. is unclear, but he brought with him the Old World knowledge of decorating both pottery and glass.

In 1894 when he was 45 years old, he is recorded as living in Rochester, Pennsylvania, a town not far from Pittsburgh. His occupation then was listed as “salesman.” Four years later an area directory carried a notice for the Thuemler Manufacturing Co., a business that described itself as a “manufacturer of novelties, decorators of china and glassware,” This theme was repeated in its billhead. A number of early Thuemler items carry a Rochester mark.

By 1901 Hugo had relocated his operations to the Pittsburgh suburb of Sewickley where he employed a number of skilled decorators. He also maintained a second address, probably a sales office, in Pittsburgh. Subsequently his wares bore a “Pittsburg” (the official spelling for a short time) pottery mark.

Thuemler’s firm filled an evident need for American breweries. In the past decorated advertising mugs and steins had to be ordered from German suppliers with added cost and delay. Hugo’s ceramics, some of them shown here, solved that problem. I am particularly fond of the blue and white stein produced for the Fred Sehring Brewery of Joliet, Illiniois, and the patriotic themes created for Pabst of Milwaukee and the American Brewery of St. Louis. The handle of many steins, like the one from Sprenger Brewing, featured a ceramic portrait of King Gambrinus, the mythical German king who is the unofficial patron of beer and brewing.

Hugo Thuemler appears to have lived a bachelor’s life. In Sewickley he lived at the Elmhurst Inn, a boarding house that originally was a private mansion. According to a newspaper obituary Thuemler died there on September 1, 1908, at the age of 61. Cause of death was listed as “acute indigestion.” After Hugo’s demise, production ceased and all references to the firm disappeared. More than a century later, however, Thuemler items are being avidly collected and prices have risen steadily.

For a decade or more I have kept an ever-growing list of Thuemler products that have come to my attention. It now numbers some 90 marked items and an additional few that are unmarked but may be attributed to Thuemler. The list does not contain prices. Anyone wishing a copy may write me enclosing a self-addressed stamped envelope: Jack Sullivan, 4300 Ivanhoe Place, Alexandria VA, 22304.

A Peek at the "Eye of Providence"

2010-08-13T16:12:00.000-07:00

Always finding ceramic tiles of interest, I was impelled to buy one recently on a business trip to Armenia. As show here it is dominated by a single eye in a triangle surrounded by blue and gold rays. The ancient Armenian script at the bottom could not be translated by the shop proprietor but she told me that the import of the tile was keeping away the “evil eye.”

Well, yes and no. Actually this image generally is known as the “Eye of Providence,” representing the ability of the Almighty to see and know what is happening in the world, and -- even more important -- what will happen in the future. The roots of this icon go back to ancient Egypt where the eye of Horus, a god of the Sun and Moon, was frequently displayed and known as a “wedjat.” The single “all seeing” eye was, for example, the central element of seven priceless gold, fiance, carnelian and lapis lazuli bracelets found on the mummy of Pharaoh Shoshenq II and shown here.

With the coming of Christianity, the eye came to be surrounded by a triangle, representing the Trinity and generally was depicted with rays of celestial light radiating from it. An excellent example is found on the Aaachen Cathedral in western Germany, the oldest cathedral in northern Europe. Begun in 786, Charlemagne is buried there. The Constitution of France that includes the famous Rights of Man traditionally has radiated at the top a similar eye symbol.

Most notably the Eye of Providence has found its place in the New World as a standard element of the one dollar bill. On the back of the bill are two circles. Together they comprise the Great Seal of the United States. The eye is on top of a pyramid and above it the Latin for “God has favored our undertaking.” It represents the long and somewhat tedious effort by the Continental Congress, immediately following the Declaration of Independence, to create a seal for the new and embattled nation.

The three chosen for the task were are familiar names: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. Although these were among the most distinguished Americans, none of them knew anything about heraldry. Led by Franklin, they turned to the artist Pierre Eugene du Simitiere, an expert and collector of all things American. Du Simitiere turned out a sketch, shown here, that no one --except the Big Three -- liked. Note that the eye appears in the design.

Not until years later was a seal approved by Congress. Through the leadership of Franklin, the Eye of Providence became a part of the Great Seal. Over ensuing years its presence there has stirred many interpretations and much speculation about its meaning. A recent movie entitled “National Treasure” starring Nicholas Cage has as major premise that the eye is a key to unlocking secrets about a treasure stash. It is also has been linked to the use of an all-seeing eye in Masonic rituals. Evidence is, however, that the Masons adopted the eye as a symbol only after approval of the Great Seal. Note that the Masonic eye shown here does not include the Trinity triangle.

Through the years the Eye of Providence has found its way into other symbols. For example, it is part of the seal of the State of Colorado. Likewise the seal of the University of Mississippi. Very recently the Information Awareness Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) adopted the symbol as its own. That has engendered speculation that this semi-secret agency has adopted George Orwell’s warning that “Big Brother is watching you.”

Certain powerful images survive down through the centuries even as they take on altered uses and new meanings. The Eye of Providence must be counted among them. It surely has proven its durability as a symbol from ancient Egypt to the present times. If in doubt about that, take out a one dollar bill and look at the back.

A Bit of Lubricity Helps the Medicine Go Down

2010-07-30T05:32:00.000-07:00

Out of a constant fascination with the advertising messages of the Victorian era, I have determined that the merchandising most likely to feature sexually titillating themes came from the peddlers of bitters. Bitters were mixtures of herbs, roots and tree bark laced with a generous amounts of alcohol that were sold as cures for a wide range of diseases and ailments. At some point the companies that produced them concluded, as many advertisers have today, that “sex sells.”

In that earlier era, 1880s-1900, one that many identify with puritanical mores, these medicine men often appear to have gotten away with lubricious images on their signs, ads, and trade cards that are startling even by today’s standards. We start with a relatively benign image from Brown’s Iron Bitters. It features a winsome young girl displaying a lovely -- and largely bare -- bosom.

More scandalous are the claims made for this product as a “sure cure” for such maladies as malaria, malarial fevers, and “decay in liver, kidneys and bowels.” A tall order for a tonic that likely carried as much alcohol as a bottle of gin and little else of therapeutic value. It was a product of the Brown Chemical Company of Baltimore, Maryland, which trademarked the potion about 1882 and began suing any other patent medicine with “iron” in its name. Ironically, the principal product of Brown Chemical was fertilizer.

The woman advertising Carmeliter Bitters not only is displaying considerable cleavage but has her skirt hitched up as she leans provocatively what appears to be a bar stool. This nostrum was advertised not only as “The Elixir of Life,” but as a remedy for “all kidney and liver complaints.” It was the product of Burhenne & Dorn who did business at 347 Hamburg Avenue in Brooklyn, New York.

A card memorializing a meeting of the the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), representing Civil War soldiers was the occasion for Pond’s Bitters to tell a double entendre joke about fighting a battle under a flag, represented by an apron gracing a pretty waitress. As the flip side of the trade card discloses, Pond’s Bitters also included a long list of illnesses it cured, mostly stomach and intestinal ailments, but adding malaria.

The Chicago-based medicine peddler was a particular target of Samuel Hopkins Adams, the journalist whose exposes in Collier’s Magazine in 1905 led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act. In the first of his series on “The Great American Fraud” Adams took aim at Pond’s for “trading on public alarm” by running an ad claiming to cure meningitis with one of its nostrums while New York was suffering an epidemic of the disease.

Rex Bitters was the source of two racy trade cards. One shows a rooster in formal dress trailing a similarly fancy costumed hen with the caption, “It looks like a cinch.”
At bottom left is a baby chick singing a popular song of the day: “Meet me tonight in dreamland.” The second Rex trade card leaves nothing to the imagination, showing a doctor leaning against the exposed breasts of a Gibson Girl. The caption “Heart Trouble” is, however, ambiguous as to which of the two figures it refers.

Rex Bitters, a Chicago-produced patent medicine, advertised itself as curing biliousness, malaria, chills and fever, neuralgia, constipation, pain in back, dyspepsia, sick headache, indigestion, sour stomach, and all “affections” of the kidneys and liver. Despite its obvious alcoholic content, the label advised customers to give children a teaspoonful twice a day and at bedtime “if required.” Rex Bitters merchandising emphasized that it had been recognized as a medicine by the Internal Revenue Department which had slapped a special tax on such products to help pay for the Spanish-American War.

The final example is from Lash’s Kidney & Liver Bitters, an outfit that claimed offices and laboratories in both Chicago and San Francisco. It is perhaps the most salacious of the group. Professing to demonstrate the use of the five senses, it portrays a tryst between an attractive, statuesque woman and and suave mustached visitor. The ending does not need further explanation.

Like the other bitters seen here, Lash’s claimed to be a “sure cure” for a wide range of illnesses including malaria --a seeming favorite among the patent medicine crowd -- and assured customers that it was “positively without equal for all diseases arising from a disordered condition of the kidneys and liver.”

In retrospect, if the bitters companies images seem scandalous, they did considerably less harm than did the bitters themselves. Adams, whose muckraking series of articles for Colliers Magazine helped achieve passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, called these so-called “cures” a fraud on the public and even worse, “subtle poisons.” While the Act required a listing of ingredients on the labels of patent medicines, it did not outlaw claims to cure diseases.

The first head of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Harvey W. Wylie, in several public statements, however, soon made it known that potions claiming to be cures would be called on to prove those claims. Failure to do so could open them to prosecution for mail fraud. Almost overnight many professed cures were transformed into less aggressive remedies and tonics.

Key words: bitters advertising, Samuel Hopkins Adams

The Art Nouveau Whiskey Jug

2010-07-17T05:50:00.000-07:00

Among my favorite artistic movements is “Art Nouveau,” a style that burst into wide popularity about 1890 in Europe and the United States and held sway until snuffed out by the cold winds of World War One three decades later. Characterized by lavish ornamentation with lines reminiscent of twining plan tendrils or ribbons flowing in the wind, Art Nouveau was frequently used in the merchandising of the day, selling everything from bicycles and eggs to cigarette papers, throat lozenges, and -- yes -- whiskey.

An example is the Thomas Rossland scotch whisky jug, displaying a familiar Art Nouveau theme, the “Tree of Life,” with its roots, branches, leaves and some kind of round fruit. This jug recently fetched more than a $1,000 at auction. It was the product of the Doulton Lambeth Pottery , now known as Royal Doulton. Between 1882 and 1914 this British pottery manufacturer issued dozens of whiskies that incorporated highly glazed necks, shoulders, handles and bodies with Art Nouveau themes in a range of rich and colored glazes.

In the United States, by contrast, only a few distillers and whiskey dealers used the decors common to Art Nouveau. Note here a Doulton jug, predominantly brown and yellow with distinctive flowers in a drapery. Below it is an American jug that features similar flowers. It is from “Coronation Brand” and is “Scotch-type Whiskey.”

Thereby hangs a mystery. This jug is part of a series of three, all of which go under the name, Coronation Brand, but with presumably different contents. One of them is labeled “Irish Type Whiskey” and the other “Kornschnapps Style Liquor” -- a German alcoholic beverage. All profess to be “Products of Ohio.” Each reflects the Art Nouveau sensibility in the differing modes of flowing shapes that surround their labels. Two decades of trying to locate the origins of these highly unusual whiskeys has yielded me absolutely no clues.

Nor are there any clues to the potteries that might have made and designed the labels for these jugs. My suspicion is that it was Sherwood Brothers of New Brighton, Pennsylvania. (See my blog of November 2009.) This is the only U.S. pottery in my knowledge with the ability to do wrap around transfers of the good design and sophistication represented by these Art Nouveau containers. Sadly, often Sherwood Brothers did not mark their products.

Whoever made them clearly were taking cues and themes from Doulton jugs, such as the 1900 “Good Luck and Happiness to You” whiskey done in the Art Nouveau style. One final American whiskey jug done in that mode is also from Ohio. It is labeled “Finest Old Sour Mash” and was issued by the R. Brand & Company distillers from Toledo. Many of these Brand jugs carry a mark indicating that they were made in Scotland by the Port Dundas Pottery, second only to Doulton in its ability to create attractive whiskey containers.

As I continue to seek an answer to the puzzle of of these Coronation Brand jugs, it is my hope that through this blog new information may come to light. In the meantime I will treasure looking at these Art Nouveau artifacts on display in my house.

Dr. Seuss Sells "The Sauce"

2010-07-03T14:18:00.000-07:00

Last October when I used an anti-Prohibition cartoon by signed Dr. Seuss, it did not occur to me that there was a intriguing back story in the image. I have always been a fan of the Seuss books, from Cat in a Hat to Horton Hears a Hoo and beyond -- books read to my sons when they were tots.

Unknown to me then was that their author, Theodor Seuss Geisel, came from a family of brewers. His grandfather Geisel owned the Kalmbach and Geisel Brewery in Springfield, Mass. In 1894 it was renamed the Highland Brewery and five years later became part of the Springfield Brewery. In 1919, on the very day his father became president of the company, Prohibition was voted and eventually forced the brewery to close. Geisel never forgot the financial loss and trauma this event caused his family.

The 1942 anti-Prohibition cartoon was occasioned by a bill in Congress to lower the draft age that included a rider that would have outlawed the sale of liquor in areas adjacent to military installations. The concern, shared by Ted Geisel, was that there were very few liquor stores in wartime America that were not near some kind of military site. This threat occasioned the cartoon referencing the long dead Prohibition stalwart, Carrie Nation, riding on a characteristically Dr. Seuss camel.

Further research led to the realization that at times during his career Dr. Seuss not only championed strong drink but actually provided advertising materials for beer and whiskey. Before children’s books were a major occupation, Geisel had made a living largely by drawing ads for a number of U.S. companies, initially for an insecticide named “Flit,” made by Standard Oil.

Geisel’s first foray into alcoholic beverages occurred in 1937 when he was commissioned to do a series of ads for Schaefer Beer. A New York City brewery, the F & M Schaefer Company had been founded in 1842 by brothers from Wetzlar, Germany. The brewery survived Prohibition and at one point in the 1950s Schaefer was reputed to be the largest selling beer in the world. Geisel was hired to give a lively image to Schaefer’s bock beer, a dark malty seasonal beverage that typically is available in March and April.

Because “bock” is also the word for goat in German, the brew often is depicted with that image. In keeping with this tradition, Geisel used a typically Seussian-looking mountain goat for his ad. In one illustration, the goat is a trophy animal who is looking enviously off the wall at two glasses of beer passing by. In another, the goat is a waiter carrying a foaming schooner on a tray.

When a small Scotch distillery in 1939 decided to advertise in the U.S. market, it needed a special image that would make its bottles distinctive on the shelves of bars and liquor stories. Given the assignment, Geisel created the “Hankey Bird,” an absurd looking avian with a large beak and wearing a kilt. With the use of a small spring, the figure snapped onto the neck of a bottle of Hankey Bannister Scotch. It was brought instant attention to the whiskey and sales soared.

Noting his distinctive work for Schaefer, in 1942 the Narragansett Brewing Company, located in Cranston, Rhode Island, asked Geisel to undertake an ad campaign for its beer. The president, Rudolph F. Haffenreffer, was a avid collector of Native American artifacts including cigar store Indians. Haffenreffer asked Geisel to weave an Indian theme into his advertising.

Thus was born “Chief Gansett,” a blocky figure wearing beads, carrying a hatchet and boasting a multicolored headdress. Most often this wooden Indian carried a large goblet of beer. The image proved very popular and the Chief appeared on a range of marketing items including trays, bar coasters, and posters as well as appearing in newspaper and magazine ads. In an ad for bock beer, Chief Gansett was depicted riding on an animal that bore a strong resemblance to the goat Geisel earlier had drawn for Schaefer Beer.

Throughout his career Ted Geisel as Dr. Seuss had written and drawn for youngsters. In 1957, however, he published two remarkable books that sent his reputation into the stratosphere, Cat in a Hat and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Thereafter he was able to abandon commercial work entirely to concentrate on children’s literature. While generations forward may be thankful for that, a look back is instructive to the time when Dr. Seuss sold the sauce and a whole lot of other things through his art. Those drawings lovingly have been gathered by Dr. Charles D. Cohen, a Springfield Mass. dentist, in a marvelous book called Seuss, the Whole Seuss and Nothing But the Seuss. It is a must read for any Dr. Seuss aficionado.

What Were the Chinese Drinking?

2010-06-05T06:14:00.001-07:00

In an 1883 cartoon the famous New York political cartoonist, Thomas Nast, who regularly lampooned anti-Chinese immigrant prejudice, suggested in a drawing that if the Chinese embraced our whiskey and other native vices, they would be more acceptable to the American public. The Chinese failed to heed his tongue-in-cheek advice and continued for generations to import their liquor from Asia in distinctive ceramic bottles. Those containers are considered worthy of collecting today, but the question remains: “What were the Chinese drinking?”

During the 1800’s great numbers of Chinese workers were brought to the United States to work on the railroads and other infrastructure projects. They carried with them or had imported distinctive pottery containers, such as those shown here. For years these bottles have been classified as Chinese “Tiger” whiskeys. No one seems quite sure why they acquired that name but it may have been that early ones contained a paper label picturing a tiger.

When these containers come up for sale as they frequently do, the labels almost always have been washed away and lost. When they are found labeled the pictures vary by distillery and include a geisha, rose, eagle and storks. I have never seen a tiger label.

Two styles of container prevail. The most common is a bulbous bottle with an attractive curved neck and open mouth. When found these jugs almost never have their closure which appears to have been a cork plug that was further sealed across the top. These ceramics came with a dark brown glaze and were imported in great numbers. Occasionally they are decorated but most usually are plain.

A second style is cylindrical and may be of a later vintage. These are lighter in color, often crudely thrown pottery, but occasionally are found with underglaze cobalt lettering and pictorials, such as the two storks on a Wing Lee Wai bottle. Note that the company is identified as a “wine merchant.” Similar evidence has led many to conclude that these containers contained wine, not whiskey.

What kind of wine? Some bottles in Chinese say “medicinal wine,” others indicate just wine. Having twice been to China, I have amply tasted Chinese wine. Made from grapes, it is not particularly alcoholic and very sweet to the American taste. It is difficult to believe that a Chinese laborer, even one who was sick, would send across the ocean for his native wine.

The more recent bottles may hold a clue to the contents. Many of them are found with the legend shown here: “Federal law forbids reuse or resale of this bottle.” Known as the “nasty words,” this warning was required on all containers of alcoholic beverages from 1934 -- when Prohibition ended -- until the mid-1960s. Some of these containers also have labels that indicate the “proof” of their contents, that is, the percentage of alcohol involved. Marked as 90 proof, this is far more alcohol (45%) than fortified wines contain. Such strength even exceeds many brands of whiskey and gin.

Out of this evidence, I have concluded that these bottles contained a forerunner of China’s current alcoholic beverage of choice, called “maotai,” This is a highly potent drink made from rice or sometimes sorghum. It has an aroma and taste that some have called reminiscent of turpentine and cat urine. Famously, President Richard Nixon swallowed maotai and grimaced as he toasted Mao Zedong during his groundbreaking trip to China.

I became acquainted with maotai during a 1976 visit. A group of us were partying with it and I recall running to a nearby Shanghai store to buy another bottle. The next morning I woke up with what is called the “dreaded maotai sweats.” A not-so-subtle aroma seemed to be exuding from every pore of my body. And my head was pounding. The experience even 34 years later is memorable.

To bring this discussion to a conclusion, my guess is that neither whiskey nor wine was poured from these ceramics, but rather a highly distilled clear liquid, whose closest equivalent would be Appalachian moonshine. Only such a high voltage jolt, it seems to me, could have made it worth the trouble for Chinese immigrants to haul these bottles across the Pacific.

At Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese: Looking for Dr. Johnson

2010-05-22T06:22:00.000-07:00

In London, England, just off Fleet Street in a mews called Wine Office Court is a tavern known as “Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.” Dating from at least 1667 and seen here in a 19th Century etching, this landmark rates at least a paragraph in virtually every London guidebook. British Heritage magazine has listed it among the 100 best pubs in England.

Although many great writers like Charles Dickens and Mark Twain have been known to visit Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese over the centuries, the establishment has identified itself most closely with with one of England’s most renowned literary figures, Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). Johnson is perhaps best known for his pioneering Dictionary of the English Language. A man of enormous intellect, he equaled it in physical bulk, loving food, drink and conversation. In every instance, he believed, these were best obtained in a tavern.

Such establishments were, Johnson avowed, among England’s greatest achievements: “At at tavern there is general freedom from anxiety. You are sure you will be welcome; and the more noise you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things you call for, the more welcome you are....There is nothing yet which has been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.”

With such an enthusiastic customer, it seems clear why Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese has been so assiduous in claiming Johnson as its own. For example, a 1937 Cheshire Cheese pamphlet, shown here, labels itself “The Literateur’s Haunt for 300 Years” and has Johnson’s picture on the cover. A 1952 souvenir plate shows him sitting in a corner of the tavern and a 1908 postcard photograph depicts a similar scene in what is dubbed, “The Johnson Room.” No wonder years of guidebooks have steered tourists to this alley pub.

In fact, while he was compiling his historic Dictionary, Johnson lived just around the corner in a large rented house with three floors and a spacious garret. It not only was home to the writer and his wife, but also the studio/office where he worked on the tome with a team of assistants. Surely the famous Englishman must have been a frequent patron.

Or that was what I thought in 1990 when in London a friend and I -- Yankee tourists -- ventured into Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese for a lunch of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. A rambling structure, the tavern is a series of bars and dining rooms with wooden benches and working fireplaces. It also has myriad souvenirs for sale, including beer mugs, creamers and cheese pots. Dimly lighted and smoky, the room in which we ate was dominated by a large portrait of Dr. Johnson.

After lunch we walked around the corner to Johnson’s Gough Square house, shown here, which now is a museum in his memory. “We have just come from Dr. Johnson’s favorite tavern, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese,” I announced proudly to the curator. Clearly annoyed he replied: “There is no evidence he ever stepped inside THAT place.” “But,” I stammered, “all the guidebooks....” “Bosh,” he said with finality.

Upon returning to the U.S. I did prodigious research including rereading the famous biography of Johnson by Thomas Boswell. Boswell, who spent many evenings with the sage, mentions many taverns frequented by the literary giant. They include the Crown & Anchor, Clifton’s of Butchers Row, the Turk’s Head, Le Teliers, Parsloes, and the Mitre. Nowhere in Boswell or any other biography I could find any mention of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.

While it is possible that Johnson dropped into this nearby establishment from time to time, independent validation is lacking. I subsequently wrote an article on that topic that appeared in a British magazine and later in my book on UK whiskey ceramics. Recently I noted that at least one London guidebook now admits that no real proof exists that Johnson ever frequented Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.

Would Johnson have minded that his name and image have been appropriated, perhaps illegitimately, on puff materials and souvenirs for a dingy London pub? Perhaps not. After all it was Johnson himself who once told a friend: “A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity.”

Adolph Metzner: Art in Tile

2010-05-07T07:20:00.000-07:00

In December 2009, this blog concerned finding the past in cyberspace. My post featured a glass paperweight that revealed the fortunes and conflicts of Hungarian laxative waters a century ago. More recently I purchased a pottery tile that through Internet research has revealed the life and hard times of a talented German immigrant to the United States and his dreams -- and disappointments -- in creating high art through ceramics.

The brown Victorian-style tile, shown here, is marked on the back with the name Hamilton Tile Company. This short-lived firm was the passion of Adolph Metzner who was born in Germany in 1834 and emigrated to the U.S. in the early 1850’s. He settled in Louisville, Kentucky, and learned pharmacy but always dreamed of an artistic career. When the Civil War broke out, he joined the all-German 32nd Indiana Regiment and was made an officer. Shown here in his captain’s uniform, Metzner became the regimental cartographer and artist, creating more than 100 drawings and watercolors of army life. He also was involved in bloody combat at Chickamauga, Shiloh, Missionary Ridge, and other battle sites.

After the war Metzner, apparently at the behest of a fellow officer in the 32nd, settled in Indianapolis. Now married, he put his dreams of being an artist aside and took up pharmacy again, For the next decade and a half, he labored as a druggist. At night, he experimented with making ceramics in a back yard kiln, achieving some proficiency.

When his young wife became ill, he tried to cure her with the medicines he knew, but failed. With her death, Metzner, heartbroken, abandoned pharmacy, pulled up stakes and with his two sons, Otto and Max, moved to Hamilton, an Ohio town near the Indiana border, to pursue his dream. In 1883 he purchased an existing pottery there and set out to make art tiles, which were very popular at the time. He called his operation the Hamilton Tile Company. A contemporary source described Metzner’s efforts:

“There was no money to work with and things looked blue indeed. The tile making was a constant series of hard experiments and the Metzners stood by it nobly. They would work away and get out a batch of tiles and get them in the kiln and would then skirmish around and scare up money enough to buy a load of coal and fire up the kiln and then with anxious hearts they would watch around that kiln hoping for respectable results. When the kiln was opened out would come another failure. And this thing repeated itself time and again. A less hopeful man than Metzner would have quickly given it up.”

But Metzner did not surrender. Beginning in about 1884, with the financial participation of an old Army buddy, success crowned his persistent efforts and the firm produced enameled tiles whose quality was among the highest in the country. Examples are provided here.

Once more, however, Metzner’s dreams were dashed as success was fleeting and lucrative markets proved elusive. By 1901, the pottery had failed financially and was purchased by outside interests. Metzner himself moved to Zanesville, Ohio, to labor for another tile maker. After four years, he moved on to a pottery in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where he worked until his retirement. This artistic dreamer, who had seen so much hardship and disappointment, died there in 1918 at the age of 84. His burial site is unknown even to his descendants.

Adolph Metzner’s artistic achievements, however, have been recognized by subsequent generations. Shown here is a tile work depicting Shakespeare’s Falstaff, the work of Metzner’s hand, which recently sold for almost $2,000. His tiles of a monk contemplating a beer was taken by a great grandson to the PBS Antiques Road Show not long ago and priced at $5,000. In death, if not in life, Metzner achieved his dream.

That Devil's Island Gin!

2010-04-20T06:22:00.000-07:00

“Give me one more drink, Of that Devil's Island Gin, Give me one more drink, Of that Devil's Island Gin, I've been drunk once tonight, And I want to get drunk again.”

Excerpt from Devil’s Island Gin Blues, by Roosevelt “Honeydripper” Sykes

In March 1905 a white teenager named Margaret Lear was on her way home from school in Shreveport, Louisiana. As she passed through an African-American neighborhood, possibly similar to the one shown here, she was brutally attacked and murdered. Her accused assailant, a black man named Coleman, allegedly was drunk on “cheap gin” he had bought at a local saloon.

The murder and its aftermath garnered national headlines. Three years later a prominent muckraking American journalist, Will Irwin, writing in Collier’s Weekly of May 16, 1908, used the incident to indict the saloon trade and in particular inexpensive gin that was being produced by Northern distilleries and, as Irwin saw it, “sold in the low dives of all the black belt from the Carolinas to Louisiana and Mississippi.” .

Irwin, shown here, also blamed the names and advertising for brands of gin as suggesting that they possessed the properties of aphrodisiacs. “The gin was cheap, its labels bore lascivious suggestions and were decorated with highly indecent portraiture of white women.” Implicit was his conclusion that this liquor was responsible for sexual aggression in Coleman and other blacks. The journalist singled out for special attention Devil’s Island Endurance Gin. In quart bottles, like the one shown here, it sold for $1.

Two of the brand’s early 1900s trade cards seem to bear out Irwin’s contentions. The first shows a man peeking into a woman’s beach dressing room where it is not clear how much clothing she has on. Opened, she is seen wearing a bathing suit and seems little disturbed about being watched and says: “Those fellows who drink that Devil’s Island Endurance Gin seem to have the very “devil’ in them.” Note that from the shadows, Satan is watching. The second trade card shows a woman in the process of undressing, with scads of bosom showing. She sees the devil in the mirror with a large bottle of gin. The liquor is credited with giving “that good and funny feeling” and other positive effects. This gin clearly was being merchandised as a stimulant for something.

Devil’s Island Endurance Gin was a product of Dreyfuss, Weil & Co. of Paducah, Kentucky, which registered the trade name in 1905. In business from 1887 until 1918 and the coming of Prohibition, the company was both a distiller and distributor of a wide number of liquor brands, chiefly whiskey. One of its ads boasted that Devil’s Island Endurance Gin was made from a secret European formula and that by its third year in production 7,619,410 bottles had been sold in the U.S.

Irwin’s linking of Devil’s Island Endurance Gin and the Lear murder, caught the attention of one of America most prominent industrialists and millionaires, Henry Ford. A notorious anti-Semite,Ford did a ghost-written weekly column for a newspaper he owned, the Dearborn Independent. On the assumption that Dreyfuss and Weil were Jewish, he used the article to rail against liquor trade for selling the “products of Jewish poisoned liquor factories.” The Jewish race, he more than implied, was responsible for lawless actions of the Negro race. One derogatory racial stereotype thereby became the occasion for another.

As for Coleman, guilty or not, he was nearly killed by a white lynch mob and the Louisiana militia had to be called out to protect him. Within nine days after the crime, according to newspaper reports, he was tried in a Shreveport court, found guilty, and “legally” executed. The New York Times reported that the Governor of Louisiana was expected to be in attendance at the hanging. Another stanza of Syke’s 1933 lyrics for Devil’s Island Gin Blues goes like this:

Oh, you learn tomorrow, 'Bout a month ago, You'll learn tomorrow night, 'Bout a month ago, Couple bottles of mo' gin, Mama, Lordy, an’ I had to go.

Mark Twain's "Jug of Empire"

2010-04-04T09:29:00.000-07:00

Several years ago I published an article on Mark Twain, as the “patron saint” of American whiskey, one that subsequently was reprinted in my most recent book, Mostly Whiskey. With the 100th anniversary of Twain’s death approaching during April, 2010, it seems appropriate to devote attention once again to this giant of American literature and his love of Kentucky bourbon.

More than any other writer in the Nation’s history, Samuel Clemens aka Twain celebrated whiskey as the national drink of choice. He has been quoted saying: “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.”

Twain’s most notable tribute to whiskey was an elaborate spoof on a patriotic saying known to young and old of his time: “Westward the course of empire takes its way....” Originally penned by an obscure American poet, the quote was reprinted frequently. It also became the title and theme of an famous 1861 painting, shown here, that still adorns a stairway in the U.S. Capitol. Put simply, the quotation implies that the United States was destined to move west and create an new empire in North America.

For Twain, who made a career out of debunking overly romantic notions, the driving force behind American expansion was not empire-building but whiskey. In his autobiographical book, “Life on the Mississippi,” the author took issue with the well known motto. It should have been, he said: “Westward the Jug of Empire takes its way.” Twain explained:
“How solemn and beautiful is the thought, that the earliest pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never the missionary--but always whiskey! Such is the case. Look history over; you will see. The missionary comes after the whiskey-- I mean he arrives after the whiskey has arrived; next comes the poor immigrant, with ax and hoe and rifle; next, the trader; next, the miscellaneous rush; next, the gambler, the desperado, the highwayman, and all their kindred in sin of both sexes; and next, the smart chap who has bought up an old grant that covers all the land; this brings the lawyer tribe; the vigilance committee brings the undertaker. All these interests bring the newspaper; the newspaper starts up politics and a railroad; all hands turn to and build a church and a jail-- and behold, civilization is established forever in the land. But whiskey, you see, was the van-leader in this beneficent work.”

But Twain/Clemens was not merely a man of words about whiskey. While not given to overindulging, his fondness for bourbon was well known. During his brief career as a journalist in Washington about 1868, Twain agreed to share expenses with a roommate with a similar taste for whiskey. Their total joint income per week was $24. In his autobiography he recounts: “Twenty four dollars a week would really have been riches to us if hadn’t had to support that jug; because of the jug we were always always sailing pretty close to the wind....”

When a friend sent him a case of whiskey, Twain’s thank-you note ran this way: “The whiskey arrived in due course...; last week one bottle of it was extracted from the wood and inserted in me, on the installment plan, with this result: that I believe it to be the best, smoothest whiskey now on the planet.”

In his later years, while in England on a lecture tour and to receive an honorary degree from Oxford University, shown here. Twain remarked to companions that despite enjoying their company he badly missed the taste of Kentucky bourbon. To accommodate him, his friends imported six cases and even switched from Scotch to help him drink it. Old Crow whiskey, claiming Twain for their own, ran a series of ads in the 1960s around his personna, including one with glass in hand and decanter nearby.

Twain was born two weeks after the approach to earth of Halley’s Comet. In 1909, the author predicted: “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year and I expect to go out with it....The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.” Prophetically, Twain died on April 17, 1910, reputedly one day after the comet’s closest approach to earth.

As shown here, lensman Dave Thomson has created a photo montage of Twain’s birthplace in Missouri; his home in Redding, Connecticut, where he died; and Halley’s Comet. The only important item missing from Thomson’s picture, to my mind, is a bottle of Kentucky bourbon.

Using Kids to Sell Booze

2010-03-19T06:01:00.000-07:00

As unthinkable as it might be today, in the late 18th and early 19th Century in the United States whiskey distillers, distributors and saloons not uncommonly advertised their wares using pictures of children. As the display here of vintage trade cards demonstrates, those images varied considerably in their decorum.

Take for example the winsome young girl wearing the Netherlands national colors, advertising Old Maryland Dutch Whiskies. She epitomizes why children were favored for merchandising. The girl is young and sweet, her expression is soulful and she embodies the rosy cheeks and curly hair of innocence. This depiction of childhood projects an image that reenforced the whiskey’s motto: “The purest stimulant in existence.” Note the added quirky statement: “When not taken immoderately, there will be an entire absence of Nervous Prostration.” What?

Also fetching is the young girl with golden hair who is shown offering a flower to an owl, a vintage trade card that advertised Stonewall Whiskey. This was a brand from Charles Rebstock & Company of St. Louis, Missouri (1871-1918), self-described as distillers and whiskey merchants. Today Charles might be condemned for exploiting childhood images. In his own day, he was an officer of the Civic League of St. Louis, an organization dedicated to “making the city more healthful, comfortable and attractive.”

More controversial is the young girl illustrated on a Riverside Purified Whiskey trade card. Note that she is depicted displaying not only a bit of ankle but some adolescent bosom. This whiskey, which advertised itself “for medicinal use,” was the product of the B.F. Noll & Son whiskey dealers of Philadelphia (1881-1885).

More risqué by far is a trade card from Becker’ Saloon in Reno, Nevada. It shows two young boys playing with a monkey apparently belonging to the attractive women behind it. The accompanying verse is blatantly double entendre An article in the Reno Evening Gazette of April 20, 1888, described Becker’s Saloon as daily entertaining a large lunchtime crowd. They were eager for a schooner of beer and a hot lunch for 12 and 1/2 cents.

In some whiskey ads children were not on their best behavior. The R. H. Dunkle distillery of East Berkley, Pennsylvania, gave us two children on a trade card. One is a shoeless black girl, the other a white girl in a lace collar. They apparently are fighting over a book. Advertising itself as the “only rye distillery in Pennsylvania (which probably was not true), the Dunkle firm is recorded in business during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Perhaps the most shocking whiskey trade card advertised Barrett’s Rock Candy and Hermitage Rye, an alcoholic beverage merchandised widely as having positive health effects. The card shows four children drinking from a barrel of the high-octane concoction. One of the tots obviously is drunk. This inappropriate image was the product of a Boston firm and dates from the late 1800s. Author Wayne Bethard in his book on frontier medicine includes Barrett’s Rock Candy and Hermitage Rye among a number of “deadly elixirs.”

We conclude with the image of a golden haired, totally nude little girl who is reaching for a bottle, with the tag line “Papa has a headache.” It was a trade card of the Red Raven Splits, a product that sounds alcoholic but actually was laxative mineral water. From the look of the nearly empty liquor decanter on the bureau, Papa clearly had overindulged.

Today mixing whiskey and children almost certainly would draw stern rebukes from many quarters. No distiller or distributor would chance it. In those “good old days” of a century or more ago, however, images of kids hawking liquor were acceptable -- at least to the drinking public.

"Man Wanted, No Irish Need Apply"

2010-03-03T14:20:00.000-08:00

As St. Patrick’s Day approaches with its parades and parties, a time some say when everyone wants to be Irish, it is instructive to look back on a time, not so long ago, when it was quite different for immigrants from the Auld Sod. My Irish grandmother, born in Ohio about the time of the Civil War remembered the signs in her home town: “Man Wanted, No Irish Need Apply.” Prejudice against Irish was rampant throughout the United States in the 1800s and into the early 1900s.

Vivid evidence is a trade card from a St. Louis, Missouri, peddler of quack nostrums, that shows an Irishman, simian in looks, with dynamite and whiskey. It is entitled “The Friends of Ireland.” This card was circulated by a Bellevue, Ohio, pharmacy -- a town where also lived some of my Irish relatives. Irish at the time were about 12% of the population of Bellevue. Remember that trade cards were advertising pieces, meant to attract customers, not insult them.

That trade card seems tame, however, when compared to other cartoon images of the Irish in those times. “The most recently discovered wild beast” is the caption for a cartoon of an animal-like figure staring out of a cage bearing a sign: “Irish American Dynamite Skunk.” Around him are other Irish folks, apparently giving him support, while a policeman looks on in indifference. Truly it is a shocking image of an individual “bred in the United States,” as a second sign indicates.

Liquor and violence were the attributes of the Irish, if illustrations of the times are to be believed. Shown here is a cartoon of a monkey-like Irishman who brandishes a rum bottle in one hand and a flaming torch in the other, sitting on a barrel of gun powder. He is a clear and present threat to all right thinking Americans.

It was not only anonymous illustrators who were preaching the anti-Irish sermons of the time, but also well-recognized cartoonists. Thomas Nast, famous for helping to expose the corrupt Tammany Hall in New York City, was a determined foe of the Irish. In his drawing of an 1867 incident Nast depicts the rapacious Irish rioting against and defeating the forces of law and order.

Frederick Opper, who later gained national fame and fortune as the cartoonist creator of Happy Hooligan, was another artist skilled at Irish bashing. In a cartoon, captioned "A King of Shanty," he mocks Irish poverty, caricatures Irish people as ape like and primitive. This cartoon irishman has, again, the out-thrust mouth, sloping forehead, and flat wide nose of the standard Irish caricature. Note too that the man wears a cooking pot on his head.

Yet the Irishman had a vote in democratic America and the fear of mob rule was evident in depiction's of Irish and their leaders. The cartoon “Who’s Boss?” is meant to convey the idea that these less-than-human creatures were dictating the national policy on the drinking of alcohol. Mob rule, led by Irish, was thwarting the efforts of Prohibitionists.

One of the most telling images of the Irish appeared in the December 9, 1876, issue of Harper’s Weekly, which self-congratulated itself as “A Journal of Civilization.” There the Irishman is equated on a scale with a black man. The clear idea is that as the blacks were a curse on the South, so the Irish were a curse on the North.

At the age of 96 my Grandmother subscribed to Ebony magazine and strongly espoused the civil rights movement for African-Americans. When I asked her why, she said she remembered well the time when “No Irish need apply’.”

Prohibition: The View from Thuringa

2010-02-17T12:43:00.000-08:00

In 1896, Gustav Schafer and Gunther Vater founded the Schafer and Vater Porcelain Factory in Thuringa, Germany, with the purpose of making high quality porcelain items. By 1910 the reputation of the pottery for craftsmanship and design had grown to international proportions and Sears Roebuck was importing and selling large quantities of Schafer and Vater pottery in the United States.

Among the pottery’s products were a host of small figural liquor bottles for distribution by American distillers and saloons, called nips.” The term is taken from an Old English word nipperkin, meaning a container of liquor holding a half pint or less. These German giveaways were always imported empty, then filled by a distiller, whiskey distributor, or saloonkeeper and handed off to favored customers.

An example is the “Old Sedgwick” ceramic figural. That was a brand of the A. Bauer Distillery of Chicago, a distiller profiled briefly in my blog of Sept. 18, 2009. This bottle has the brand name glazed right along with the figure of the jolly Dutch toper, sitting on a barrel and smoking his pipe. Many nips bore paper labels identifying the giver and containing company advertising.

With the coming of National Prohibition to the United States, this major business opportunity was largely denied to Schafer and Vater. Profits from their American exports were severely curtailed. The company response was to design and sell objects lampooning the notion of abolishing alcoholic drink. Several of these nips are my favorites.

For example, the pottery produced a jolly Uncle Sam sitting on a barrel pouring himself a large drink from a large bottle. On the barrel is written -- What We Want. This was a clear message about the unpopularity of Prohibition. Uncle Sam’s hat comes off to decant the liquor. This figure came in blue and brown glazes and also in multicolored painted versions.

Another figural nip makes fun of the hatchet-wielding Temperance terror from Kansas, Carrie Nation, discussed in my blog of Oct. 23, 2009. The nip is a pious looking woman in a bonnet and shawl clutching a large bottle, her eyes lifted heavenward, her hands folded a in prayer. Her skirt carries the message: God save Miss Carrie Nation. This same figure comes with a range of messages. One of them asks God to save Francis Willard, the well-known leader of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

Often Schafer andVater nips came in bottle shapes with a cartoon in bas relief on one side. Among them is one multicolor ceramic showing the good ship “Prohibition” whose captain is swigging down what one presumes to be alcohol, throwing the empties into the sea, while a sailor looks on in some alarm. Another in a brown glaze, contrasts the happy drinker with the stern faced Prohibitionist and asks the (easily answered) question: “Wet or Dry?”

We conclude with a nip figurine of a rather stout gentleman with a wide smile on his face and carrying bottles, presumably of whiskey, in his hand, arms, and pocket to point of breaking, nine in all. The caption at this feet says simply Prohibition. I have pondered what message Schafer & Vater tried to get across with this image. My guess: This gent represents the fact that drinking in America actually increased in many places during Prohibition.

After a fire destroyed its first factory in 1918 Schafer and Vater rebuilt and continued to produce high quality ceramics. As a result of World War II and its postwar location in Communist East Germany, the company’s international customer base was cut off. The pottery began a slow decline that ended in 1962 when it closed. In 1972 the East German Government assumed full control of the vacant factory and is reported to have destroyed all company records and molds. The interesting and inventive ceramics of this Thuringan firm presumably can never be reproduced. As a result, Schafer and Vater nips today not only are avidly collected, they often bring fancy prices.

Nudes: Paris Salon to U.S. Saloon

2010-02-02T12:53:00.000-08:00

By 1748 the official exhibit of the French Academy of Fine Arts, known popularly as the Paris Salon, had become the greatest art event in the Western World, a status it maintained for 142 years. First held annually and later biannually, the Salon had undisputed influence in Europe and abroad. Nudes were a regular feature of the exhibits, many of them “dressed up” in mythological references. As shown here, in 1864 Artist Honore Daumier satirized middle-class French women scandalized by the Paris Salon’s many paintings of the naked Goddess Venus.

Nude paintings in the exhibit, often in reproduction, found a ready audience in the United States. American drinking establishments, from which women and children almost always were barred, regularly featured paintings of unclothed women over the bar or on the walls of their dark wood environs. The fleshy products of the Salon inevitably made their way to the American saloon.

Among the most popular and widespread were the works of William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905). Shown here in a self-portrait, Bouguereau was a staunch traditionalist whose realistic paintings on mythological themes were interpretations of classical subjects with a heavy emphasis on the female body. One of his most popular Salon offerings was called “Nymphs and Satyr,” showing a bevy of unclad damsels cavorting around a half-man, half-goat figure.

It was just the thing to lend a touch of French class to a Yankee bar. At the Hoffman House, a well-known Manhattan males-only bastion, a copy of the notorious Bouguereau painting resided on one wall. For a hefty fee Hoffman House allowed its name and the painting to be used to advertising products like cigars and whiskey. As a result “Nymphs and Satyr” was replicated on saloon signs and a wide array of merchandising items. It became as well known in the U.S. as in France.

At the Paris Salon of 1884 appeared a painting by a popular French artist named Emile Antoine Bayard (1837-1891). Entitled “An Affair of Honor,” it represented a duel with rapiers between two women who were stripped to the waist. The scene was laid in a well known Paris park where reputedly many encounters of this kind reputedly occurred among French courtesans. The popularity of the picture was enormous and it was exhibited all over the world.

Much reproduced, the image found its way into many of our 19th and early 20th Century barrooms. The Klein Brothers distillers of Cincinnati added advertising for their whiskey brands on the picture and gave copies away to favored saloon keepers. As for Artist Bayard, shown here on an 1891 magazine cover, he later moved to illustrating novels, among them “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

Angelo Asti (1847-1903) was another frequent exhibitor at the Paris Salon. Born in Italy, he resided most of his life in France and was considered a French painter. Asti was renowned for paintings of women with long hair and loose bodices as well as erotic nudes -- some depicted on those infamous French postcards.

Asti is reputed to have spent some time in America, specifically Ohio, where he may have met the Bieler boys, three scions of a Cincinnati distilling family. The Bielers had an eye for advertising their Brookfield Rye whiskey with feminine pulchritude. They distributed signs and other artifacts that displayed a fetching lady wearing a diaphanous dress and contemplating a bottle of their whiskey. It bears Asti’s signature in the lower left.

Just as the Paris Salon lost popularity in the early 1900s, so the death knell of saloon nude art was sounded by the onset of Prohibition in 1920. When Repeal occurred in 1934 women now had the vote, openly quaffed alcoholic mixtures, and increasingly frequented dens of strong drink. As the females began to walk through the swinging doors in ever great numbers, the nudes behind the bar began to come down until today they are virtually as extinct as the dodo.

Key Words: The Salon of Paris, nude saloon art