John Lobmiller and the Whiskey Shakes

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

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

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

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 1870’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 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 Villeroy and Boch 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 Villeroy and Boch ceramics, 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 Villeroy and Boch 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

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

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

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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