What the Heck Are Nordhausen Kornschnapps?

My first artcle about Nordhausen Kornschnapps was published in 1992, featuring stoneware liquor jugs with highly interesting underglaze transfers. Since that time I have collected some and identified others until it seems appropriate in this post to revisit the subject of Kornschnapps jugs (and their “cousins” the Kornbrantweins) -- and to provide a list of known versions.

The jugs shown here are pre-Prohibition. The one sure confirmation of their age is the Nordhausen Kornschnapps jug featuring a chalet. An illustration of it appears in a 1902 liquor ad from Chicago dealer Simon Hasterlik. Prohibition brought the sale of alcoholic beverages to a screeching halt in the United States in 1920 for about 15 years. After the end of the Dry Era, all liquor containers required a federal warning for the ensuing 30 years. No kornscnapps jugs have it. Conclusion: The marketing of kornschnapps in quart ceramic jugs ended in the United States with the Volstead Act.

Kornschnapps, although identifiably German, was aimed at an overseas audience and these containers are found as far away as Australia and New Zealand. German émigrés and their descendants almost certainly were the principal market. The end of the 19th Century in the U.S. liquor merchants merchandised their wares by appeals to the “old country.” Irish whiskey was decorated with shamrocks and harps; Scotch with thistles and bagpipes. Kornschnapps containers involved script, names, words and images easily associated with the Fatherland. Moreover, since the Middle Ages the town of Nordhausen has been a well-known German distilling center.

While some kornschnapp jugs were made in Scotland by potters such as Port Dundas, others were produced in the United States. Catalogues from the early 1900s indicate that some, like the “Onkel Karl” jug shown here, were designed and manufactured by Sherwood Brothers Pottery of New Brighton, Pennsylvania.

What kind of liquor was inside these bottles is anybody’s guess. Schnapps is a name given to a wide range of alcoholic drinks. In Europe the term generally is applied to a vodka-like liquor made from grain or potatoes. Many Germans use the word to denote any strong spirits, according to Rosalind Cooper in her book Liquors and Spirits. She says kornschnapps can taste like London gin, Dutch genever or even American rye whiskey -- a very wide range,

I have compiled a list of the known kornschnapps jugs, along with some indication of rarity. The ratings are notional and based almost entirely on personal observation. Although this list has remained unchanged for at least a decade, other ceramic examples may exist. Anyone wishing to make a contribution to the list or challenge the ratings should be in touch with me via email.

TRANSFER DESIGN-DISTINGUISHING WORDS-RARITY

1. Man in Cockaded Hat-Signed, “Berthold Schreiber”-Common
(in black or blue)

2. Man in Cockaded Hat - “Corn Whiskey”-Uncommon

3a Chalet with Pine-Signed, “Langerli Arierbach” - Common

3b Chalet with Pine- Signed “Fritz Oflinbarger” - Uncommon

4. Man with bowtie-No signature-Uncommon
& glass

5. Man with nightcap - Signed, “Berthold Rebenhorst” - Uncommon
& glass

6. Taller bottle, man in - “Korn und Malz...Gotterhalt’s” - Rare
nightcap

7. Rooster - “Nordhauser Kornbrantwein” - Uncommon

8. Rooster - “...Type...Corn Whiskey”- Uncommon

9. Art deco with - "Kornschnapps Style Liquor” - Rare
flaming torches “Product of Ohio”

10. Block of buildings - “Eicher Alter...Kornbranntwein... - Very rare
with side medallions Mihalovich, Fletcher...Cincinnati”

11. No picture, fancy letters - “Nordhausen Kornschnapps” - Rare

12. No picture, plain letters - “Nordhauser Corn Schnapps” - Common
inside circle

13. Man with pipe - “Onkel Karl’s” - Rare
& glass

14. Half-pint, letters in two lines, - “Nordhausen Kornschnapps” - Uncommon

Swigging the Pig

The picture shown in my last post of a pig drinking from a jug of moonshine triggered some thinking about how many porker shaped bottles there are and the fact that the swigging hole is located at a particularly unattractive place at the rear of the animal. Many believe that this was an anti-alcohol message and cite the Kirkpatrick brothers, Cornwall and Wallace, as the example.

After having failed in the pottery business in Mound City, Illinois, the Kirkpatricks in 1859 founded a pottery in Anna, a small town in southern Illinois, and called it the Anna Pottery. Their new location was successful because of rich deposits of clay in the neighborhood and access to railroad transportation to ship out their regular line of utilitarian stoneware and earthenware products.

Both men were staunch Prohibitionists with strong opinions about drinking, a habit they associated with political corruption. The Kirkpatricks set out on a single-minded campaign to create pottery containers that would discourage people from imbibing alcohol. These included jugs with snakes crawling over them and, more important for our purposes, a wide range of pig flasks. In an 1869 article for a local newspaper, the brothers summed up their feelings this way: “It is rather a hoggish propensity to be guzzling whiskey, and if the habit is indulged in, will soon reduce a man below the level of the hog and cause him to wallow in the gutter.”

In addition, drinking from the rear of the pig was assumed to be disgusting. The first flask shown here purports to provide a “railroad and river guide” on its body but also extols “a good little old Bourbon,” that it apparently contained. The wording may indicate a certain ambivalence, or perhaps sarcasm, on the part of the Kirkpatricks,

Today Anna Pottery jugs and flasks are among the most valuable American pottery bottles. They never fail to elect considerable attention whenever they are displayed and usually sell for multiple thousands. The first pig flask shown here recently sold for $23,000. The second flask also is from Anna Pottery, again showing rail and water routes., Despite displaying kiln burns, it sold for $12,000.

As for the Kirkpatrick Brothers , Cornwall died in 1890 and Wallace in 1896, spelling the end of Anna Pottery. Thus, neither saw the passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution that brought National Prohibition for which both men had campaigned with so much vigor and imagination.

Although Anna Pottery’s pig flasks command top prices, others produced similar containers both before and after the Kilpatricks--but with very different motives. Considered emblems of prosperity at the end of the 19th Century, pigs ate corn, the same grain from which whiskey was made. Moreover, pigs generally were considered “cute.” Seizing on porcine popularity and presumed appropriateness, distillers issued pig figurals as a marketing gimmick.

Among them were the honey brown flask advertising Lancaster Whiskey from Bardstown, a major whiskey-making town in central Kentucky. Pigs could get political, as demonstrated by this Albany slip covered hog advertising the 1880 candidacy of Grover Cleveland, two time President of the United States. This item sold recently for $1,725.

Pottery pigs are not the only one inviting swigs. Glass examples abound as well. The dark amber Berkshire Bitters bottle was the product of Amann & Company from Cincinnati, Ohio, founded by Anthony and Edmund Amann in 1869. It was appropriate for them to put their highly alcoholic bitters in a pig bottle since Berkshire is a well-known breed of swine. Boars can weight up to 750 pounds. Suffolk Bitters similarly featured a pig flask, green and embossed “Life Preserver.”

The Theodore Netter Distilling Company of Philadelphia offered a swallow of whiskey in a clear glass pig bottle given away to customers. Having left a partnership with two other brothers, in 1898 Theodore set up his whiskey business with wife, Hilda. With success they also opened branches in Chicago and Cincinnati but finally succumbed to Prohibition and closed in 1920. Netter’s oinker was a practical item: Once the contents were emptied it was meant to be filled with sand and used as a paperweight.

Hunting the Ceramic Hillbilly

Early in the new century it became clear to me that an entire class of artifacts with historical and cultural significance were in danger of being lost to future generations. They were ceramic souvenirs from the 1940s through the 1960s that celebrated that American icon, the Hillbilly. These included ashtrays, jugs, salt and pepper shakers, coffee mugs, and figurines.

These souvenirs were manufactured in the U.S. and overseas for a traveling public in mountain and Southern states eager to bring something home for relatives related to the scenes they had experienced. The Hillbilly -- the last stereotype still politically correct -- proved be a popular image. These ceramics involve representations of mountain folks, bearing familiar hillbilly themes and stereotypes:
* The men are inevitably heavily bearded, in ragged clothing, with a gun and/or a jug of whiskey at hand and often a dog or a pig at their side;
* The women are puffing on pipes and raising great clouds of smoke; and
* Most people are barefoot and wearing floppy hats.

Dozens of these items were showing up daily on internet auctions, most selling for under $5. My concern was that these interesting examples of Americana would be lost to future researchers and scholars. A collection resides in boxes at the Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill but is catalogued under the dismissive rubric “Southern Tacky.” Surely, I thought, these examples of American culture deserve better.

As a result, over a four year period I set out to find and buy as many different hillbilly ceramics as possible. By 2006 my collection had grown to 183: 82 ashtrays, 39 jugs, 37 salt and peppers, and 25 miscellaneous banks, toothpick holders, plates, and coffee mugs. Pieces from the collection are shown here.

During the process of collecting, I was able to research some of the potteries responsible for creating the souvenirs. For example, the Clinch Mountain jug depicted was from the Cash Family Pottery of Erwin, Tennessee. About 1945 Ray and Pauline Cash, who had run a pottery sales stand, founded their own ceramic business in Erwin that they first called Clinchfield Pottery and later renamed for themselves. Purchasing molds from defunct potteries and hiring local women decorators, they issued a line of painted stoneware until foreign imports caused them to close in 1989.

The “Corn Likker...Tennessee” jug was from Parkcraft, one among several product names used by the Ahrold Family of Burlington, Iowa, for specialty ceramics they produced at their own facilities or commissioned from other potteries. Their hillbilly jugs actually were made by Taneycomo Pottery of Hollister, Missouri, a town not far from the Branson music center. Parkcraft did the marketing only.

The pair of coffee mugs with hillbilly handles represent two major producers of hillbilly material. The one at left is from a design by Paul Webb known for his cartoons of mountain people. Marked 1948 it was made by the Imperial Pottery Company of Zanesville, Ohio. The mug on the right is from Twin Winton, a California firm that was guided until his death in 2007 by Don Winton, a talented artist and designer. His hillbilly line was launched in 1947.

Another American product is the ashtray with the man sleeping on a pig. It was produced by Charles Houston of Fresno, California, under a copyright of 1950. Other items shown here are either labeled “Made in Japan” or can be identified as such by head gear more akin to Chinese coolies. The origins of the drinking pig are completely uncertain.

Three years ago, as my hillbilly ceramics overran the space to contain them, I looked for a place to donate the collection. Through a series of contacts I was made aware of the Appalachian Cultural Museum in Boone, North Carolina. An adjunct of Appalachian State University, the museum celebrates the lives and activities of mountain people. The curator, Dr. Charles Watson, was delighted to have the donation. He drove a van to my home and carried my collection to Boone.

His museum subsequently lost its space at the University and relocation plans have been pending because of a lack of funds to lease and renovate new space. I still am full of hope that someday soon my hillbillies will find a permanent good home.

The Fulper Phenom

Sixteen years ago after a decade of research I ventured in an article, on rather flimsy evidence, that a line of frequently seen decorated whiskey jugs were the product of a New Jersey pottery prominently known for its high quality and expensive art pottery. It was the Fulper Pottery Company of Flemington, located about 23 miles north of Trenton, New Jersey.

Fulper and its successor firm, doing business from 1814 until 1980, had an international reputation for colorful glazes and innovative shapes. Its vases, lamps, figurines and other objects regularly command high prices in the antiques trade. Linking Fulper to so crude an item as a whiskey jug might seem ludicrous.

My 1993 article made the connection because of a 1905 advertisement that the Fulper company ran in a national trade publication for liquor manufacturers and distributors. Shown here, the ad featured two jugs. The one pictured on the left is shaped approximately like the whiskey ceramics in question. Moreover, the ad described the Fulper jugs as “fancy,” “handsomely made,” and “fancifully marked.” From that slim evidence and with some trepidation my published conclusion was that Fulper was the manufacturer.

For years I sought further evidence -- either to refute or confirm my identification. Calls to experts and collectors of American pottery yielded no solid information. As time passed, my frustration grew. Then in 2002 I learned that a Fulper museum had been established in Flemington by pottery historian Rob Runge and his wife. I contacted him. He answered that it was quite possible that Fulper had been the potter, and asked me to send him some photos of the jugs, which I did. His response came quickly and had me whooping with glee: “Yes, they were indeed produced by Fulper Pottery.” he wrote.

The find explained the purpose of a small kiln at the Fulper complex, shown here, whose uses had posed a mystery for Runge. After the blank jugs had been formed in the main factory, this kiln, capable of temperatures of only 1200-1300 degrees, was used to fire the gold lettering and characteristic painted flowers. The Meadville Rye jug shown here demonstrates the decoration in its pristine condition.

I subsequently sold the bulk of my Fulper whiskeys to the Runges for their museum, where they put them on display, graciously giving me credit for making the connection. I also wrote a follow-up piece about the link having been confirmed. That article has been widely circulated via the Internet and today many offerings of these jugs identify them as Fulper made. Nonetheless, these whiskey ceramics seldom command more than $100. One problem is that during the century or more they have been around, the gold decoration often has deteriorated, particularly on the dark bottom half of the jug.

For the past twenty years, I have kept an eye out for these jugs on Internet auctions and elsewhere and have compiled a list of them which now has reached 88 varieties. The list is available from me for $2.00 and a self-addressed stamped envelope. In spite of my years looking, previously unknown to me Fulper whiskeys still come along from time to time. One surfaced only last month. It is a Klein & Hyman jug from Cincinnati that is labeled “Our Champion.” It can dated from the decade 1887-1897 when that firm existed. Also notice the poor condition of the gold letttering.

As a final note, the Fulper Museum was forced to shut down several years ago because of the deteriorated condition of the building it occupied. Efforts to establish the collection at another Flemington location unfortunately have not been successful.

Where to Buddy? Hospital or Graveyard?: Ambulance Hearses

Telling the difference between an ambulance and a hearse in contemporary times is not difficult. But from 1909 when gasoline powered hearses first appeared and for three score-and ten years thereafter the distinction might be entirely in whether passenger being conveyed had vital signs -- or not. This oddity is recognized by those who collect vintage paperweights bearing vehicle images of bygone days.

Funeral homes, liveries, and other businesses that operated coaches often found paperweights a discrete way to advertise. When Aunt Fanny was choking on her meatballs, the glass object on the desk would tell you whom to call. Shown here is a small sample of the genre, along with some brief facts about the issuing merchants.

A Chicago-based outfit, the Arntzen family were not only were a limousine service and undertakers, they actually built hearses and other coaches such as this “invalid conveyance.” The Arntzens claimed to design their vehicle so that it had “no appearance of an ambulance.” The camouflage apparently was intended to deceive the neighbors when someone was carted off with bubonic plague.

Like the Arntzens, Geo. Sharer and Son were undertakers, with a chapel and funeral home on Prospect Avenue in Cleveland. Their “limousine invalid car” would take you anywhere in the city for $5. Even, I suppose, to the East Cleveland Cemetery. Putnam’s “invalid car” bears a strong resemblance to a hearse, but nowhere does the paperweight disclose that the Putnams also operated a funeral parlor in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Further evidence of being coy about their core business shows up on a paperweight from Ziegenhein Bros. of St. Louis, Missouri. It shows a vehicle that has many attributes of a hearse but gives its business only as “L. and U.” -- to be understood as livery and undertaker. The Ziegenhein family still runs a funeral home in St. Louis, but wisely have dropped the livery business.

By contrast, the Smith-Hoff-Jacobs Funeral Directors had no compunctions about making their principal occupation known to the people of Kokomo, Indiana, while advertising their “new invalid cab “ -- one that also looks suspiciously like a hearse. Gracing another weight, one made of celluloid not glass, the coach from Westcott’s of Sioux City, Iowa, likewise seems more fitted for a trip to boot hill than the emergency room.

For a non-expert like me, it is difficult to tell the make and model of these conveyances. Walter’s Funeral home in St. Petersburg, Florida, made it easy by advertising their ambulance/hearse as a Lincoln. It is reassuring that the riding with Walker meant being accompanied by a “graduate nurse.” She probably did not do the cemetery runs.

Although our final item, also celluloid, trumpets its ambulance as the “world’s finest, it says nothing about the make of the car or the name of the firm. With research it was possible to identify both. The paperweight was issued by the J. T. Hinton & Sons Funeral Home. Operating a busy mortuary in Memphis for many years, the Hintons were reported by contemporary sources as famous for their “ambitious ambulance tactics.” Might they have run over pedestrians in order to cart them away? Records indicate that their 1922 model ambulance was made especially for them by the Cunningham Motorcar Company of Rochester, New York.

The hearse/ambulance confusion lasted some 70 years. Until as late as 1979 hearses in the United States could be combination coaches that also served as ambulances. In the late 1970s, however, stricter Federal standards were decreed for ambulances. The hybrids were unable to meet them and after 1979 were discontinued. In many smaller communities even today, however, ambulances --in vehicles distinct from hearses--continue to be the business of the local undertaker. Thus, my earlier question may still be valid: “Where to Buddy?”

The Pope's Cocaine

My post on Maltine led me to some research on beverages containing cocaine. That in turn led me to a French chemist, originally from the island of Corsica. His name was Angelo Mariani (1838-1914). His particular contribution to humankind was inventing a product called coca wine. Importing tons of coca leaves from Latin America to France, Mariani soaked them in Bordeaux wine. Ethanol in the wine acted as a solvent and extracted the cocaine from the leaves, which then laced the beverage.

In 1863, at the age of 25, Angelo -- reputedly the young man shown here -- began marketing this cocaine-riddled tonic. He called it, “Vin Mariani.” Its green bottles originally contained 6 mgs. of cocaine per fluid ounce of red wine. When after many years he began exporting Vin Mariani to the United States, stronger cocaine tonics were already on the American market, so he boosted the cocaine content to 7.2 mgs.

Colorfully advertised, almost from the beginning Vin Mariani was hugely popular in Europe and America. The French writer Emil Zola bubbled over in praise, calling it: The Elixir of Life...a veritable scientific fountain of youth, which in giving vigor, health and energy would create an entirely new and superior race.” Other notables who were reported to be regular imbibers of Vin Mariani were Queen Victoria of Britain and U.S. President William McKinley. Thomas Edison endorsed the wine, saying that it allowed him to stay awake (inventing?) for longer hours.

But the most famous customer was Pope Leo XIII who is said to have carried a flask of the stuff around with him to bolster his spirits in times of need. So grateful was the Pope that he awarded a Vatican gold medal to Angelo. A hustling entrepreneur as well as inventor, Mariani saw the benefits of celebrity endorsements and frequently featured the gold medal and the Catholic pontiff in his advertising. It can be asserted without contradiction, however, that he did not seek the Pope’s blessing for a 1896 advertisement featuring a Titianesque beauty.

Meanwhile, in the United States, alarm was growing about the use of cocaine-laced beverages. Doctors and hospitals began warning about serious cases of addiction. In 1914 the Congress passed the Harrison Act that outlawed cocaine and heron in over-the-counter products. Dr. Harvey D. Wiley, first director of the forerunner of the FDA, wrote that more than a hundred wines, bearing different names, had been used for the administration of cocaine. He singled out Vin Mariani as the most widely used of these preparations. The injury caused by it and other coca tonics, Wiley asserted, “cannot be overestimated.”

As this saga was unfolding, John Pemberton of Atlanta was merchandising what he called Pemberton’s French Wine Coca. When Atlanta went dry, he responded by developing a non-alcoholic version and eventually called it Coca Cola. He later removed cocaine as an ingredient, but the name remained. For that reason some have called Angelo Mariani “the grandfather” of Coca Cola. I would agree.

Reflections on Pocket Mirrors

If it had not been for the invention of celluloid, one of America’s most popular advertising giveaway items might never have existed. A New York inventor named John Wesley Hyatt, shown here, stumbled on the substance during the 1860s while trying to find a substitute for elephant ivory in billiard balls. In the process he developed the world’s first industrial plastic.

Put into mass production in 1872, celluloid rapidly became popular for its ability to be shaped and to carry elaborate colored lithographic images. In particular it was suited as backing small mirrors that could be stowed away in a pocket. The mirrors came both round and oval, with typical size for the latter at 2 3/4 by 1 3/4 inches. An ad was on the back, a reflective surface on the front.

Millions of pocket mirrors have been distributed down through the years advertising everything from baby shoes to funeral parlors. In keeping with a theme of this blog, I have been interested in them as vintage giveaways by whiskey makers and sellers.

Even in this narrow universe, designs vary widely, although most reflect the merchandising themes of the brand of liquor they advertise. For example, Duffy’s Malt Whiskey, which claimed to be America’s only medicinal whiskey and able to make “the weak strong,” regularly featured the aged alchemist who presumably first cooked up the potion. Petts’ Bald Eagle Whiskey patriotically featured the white headed national bird on its mirror back, calling it “The Representative American.” The owner was Sanford Petts who ran a liquor business in Boston, Mass., with his son until Prohibition.

Woodford Club Rye, self-described as “the unequaled whiskey,” showed less imagination by featuring its labeled quart bottle. This booze originated with the Hanley-Hoye Co. Cofounder James Hanley was an Irish immigrant who became a towering figure in the in beer and liquor industry of Providence, Rhode Island, during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Pictures of women, sometimes clothed, sometimes not, often were featured on pocket mirrors. Phil G. Kelly of Richmond, Virginia, called one of his many rye whiskey brands “Miss Tempting.” The picture on his giveaway pocket mirror shows a middle aged woman with a mop of hair and a large hat whose allure escapes me. Lowenbach Bros., liquor dealers of Alexandria, Virginia, did not make the same mistake. Their illustration for Wakefield Rye is a full-bodied beauty fashioned after Diana, the Greek goddess of the hunt. Note the bow and arrow after dwelling on other features.

Each of these pocket mirrors is a highly collectible item -- and all made possible by John Wesley Hyatt and his serendipitous discovery of celluloid. By the way, celluloid did not prove practical for billiard balls.