The Tall Tales of Tolu

   Time was when the patent medicine manufacturers of America -- some called them “snake oil salesmen” -- reached out for exotic sounding botanicals as a means of endowing their remedies with an air of mystery and antiquity.  As a result, the lowly tolu plant shown here was magnified into a mighty cure for a range of illnesses, including tuberculosis and malaria.

The name Tolu comes from the native pre-Columbian people who inhabited a area near the Caribbean Ocean in the Sucre Department of Northern Columbia.  A small town named Tolu still exists there.   The resin, leaves and fruit of the plant traditionally had been used by the peoples of Central and South America to relieve coughs and to treat wounds.  In the hands of U.S. nostrum peddlers, however, it became “the Best Remedy for Pulmonary Diseases and General Debility connected with Loss of Appetite and Strength.”

That was the claim of Henry Bischoff,  a Charleston, South Carolina,  grocer and liquor dealer with a penchant for concocting medicines.  Although the historical record on Bischoff is scanty, he appears to have emigrated from Germany to the United States before the Civil War.   During that conflict he joined a Confederate cavalry unit known as the German Hussars as a second lieutenant.   He married a local girl, Jenny Melchers, from a prominent German family in Charleston.  Henry then settled down to run a profitable wholesale grocery,  one that specialized in liquor.

Bischoff made no secret that his Carolina Tolu Balsam contained alcoholic spirits.  In one ad he explained that in addition to containing tolu, other medicinals and rock candy,  his potion also included rye and rice whiskeys.   “This rice whiskey is commonly known as Arrack in the South and Samshoo in China,”  he explained.   “It has been used for many years by the Chinese and also by negro laborers in the southern rice fields as the only antidote to malaria and rice fever.” Despite this admission that alcohol was involved,  the promoter did not hesitate to depict children in his advertising. Seen here is a trade card showing some innocent tots playing on a beach.

Most of Carolina Tolu trade cards had more jocular themes.  It could be a large monk wolfing down a chicken drumstick while cradling a dollop of mashed potatoes on his fork, or a frog apparently making peace between a male mallard and his newly hatched chick.  My favorite
is an angry looking bird with a large beak in which he is holding a placard for Carolina Tolu Tonic.   The tonic sold for $1.00 a bottle, a day’s wage for many at the time.

If the funny stuff was on the front,  the back of Bischoff’s trade cards was all seriousness. It promised to “cure” chronic coughs, consumption (TB) and all diseases of the throat and lungs. The tonic was claimed to have the “best recommendations from prominent physicians who, in the most obstinate cases, use it successfully among their patients.”  As further evidence of the validity of Carolinia Tolu Tonic, Bischoff cited the fact that it had been verified as to its medicinal qualities by General Green B. Baum, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue.  The product bore a proprietary medicine tax stamp which meant it could be sold by dealers without a liquor license.

Bischoff had competition in a Chicago outfit called Lawrence & Martin.  They were listed in local directories as wholesalers of liquor and wine and importers of cigars.  in 1880 they introduced a patent medicine called “Tolu Rock and Rye.”  Like the Charleston quack, they heralded it as “the Great Cure for Coughs, Colds and Consumption and All Diseases of the Throat and Lungs.”  A trade card from about 1881 shows a young buxom woman, presumably a sufferer from one of the referenced maladies, tarted up for a night on the town and drinking from a bottle of Tolu Rock and Rye.  A second  card showed an angel bearing a bottle of their tolu tonic, apparently bring a sheaf of rye to the process.

Business for both firms was apparently was brisk for a time.  Bischoff opened a New York outlet.  Lawrence & Martin in 1882 created a separate company, located at the same address, called the Tolu Rock and Rye Company. They also launched an ad campaign in druggists’ magazines that plugged their nostrum as a “sure cure.”  As proof they cited a letter from Commissioner Baum similar to Bischoff’s. In it the revenue man stated:  “This compound...in the opinion of this office, would have sufficient quantity of the Balsam of Tolu to give it all the advantages ascribed to this article in pectoral complaints, while the whiskey and syrup constitute an emulsion rendering the compound an agreeable remedy to the patient.”

Whether Baum’s laudatory judgment about medicine was highly flawed or he was receiving some compensation for his letter of endorsement remains unclear.  Reputedly a military officer under Ulysses S. Grant,  Baum may have been a holdover in the Internal Revenue position from the notoriously corrupt Grant Administration.  The record indicates he later was removed from office.

The tolu boom proved to be short-lived.  The Tolu Rock and Rye Company was defunct by 1883 and Lawrence & Martin disappeared from Chicago business directories by 1885.  I have no information on how long Bischoff sold his Carolina Tolu Tonic, but the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906 virtually put an end to nostrums claiming to be cures.  Increasingly federal and state authorities, allied with the American Medical Association, were cracking down on proprietary medicines.  In 1912, Baum’s exemption was repealed.  Tolu Rock and Rye were placed on a list of “booze medicines” that required sellers to have a liquor license.

That left tolu to be used as a flavoring for candy and gum.  The dry resin is said to have a complex taste and aroma consisting chiefly of cinnamon and vanilla.  As early as 1873 a Louisville pharmacist named John Colgan was making a “Taffy Tolu Gum” by adding an extract of the plant to chicle.  By 1890 the gum was such a success Colgan and a partner founded the Colgan Chewing Gum Company.  Until he retired Colgan saw his tolu gum sold throughout the United States, Canada and Australia.

Today, according to sources,  tolu is still an ingredient in some cough syrups. Its main use, however,  is in perfumes, where its aroma is said to be valued for “its warm, mellow, yet somewhat spicy, scent.” Meanwhile, with tolu debunked,  the world is still looking hard, but so far fruitlessly,  for those “sure cures” for tuberculosis and malaria.

Absinthe and Art

 Absinthe is distilled black licorice-flavored liquor derived from botanicals, including the flowers and leaves of a plant popularly known as “wormwood,”  along with anise, sweet fennel and other medicinal herbs.  Often sugar is added. Traditionally absinthe has a natural green color and was commonly known in Europe as “The Green Fairy.” It can be highly alcoholic,  ranging from 90 proof  (45% alcohol) to 148% (74%).   At the former number it has about the same spirituous content as most whiskey and beer.  At the latter, it is off the charts.

Absinthe originated in Switzerland, the product of the Kubler family, who produced it in its original formulation.   It became very popular in the late  19th and 20th Centuries in France, particularly among Parisian artists and writers.  Among the former were such giants of Post-Impressionism as Henri Touluse-Lautrec,  Vincent Van Gogh and Amedo Modigliani, all known absinthe drinkers.  It also inspired, as shown here a wide variety of advertising posters.

Note that many of them are in Art Nouveau mode, an artistic form that was highly popular at the same time as absinthe.  “Absinthe Robinette” epitomizes the style with its sinuous lettering,  backdrop of plants, and Medusa-like hair of the scantily clad lady holding the cup. Females in various stages of undress were a staple of the absinthe advertising.  Absinthe Blanoui” produced one that features both the lady and Art Nouveau styling.

Although the prior two signs showed us the spirits in a glass,  “Rosinette Absinthe” had a more traditional approach with a bottle sitting on a table.  The image also included a fully dressed woman with a rose hiding her cleavage.  The poster for “Terminus Absinthe” caused a minor scandal.   It used the images of two famous stage personalities of the day -- “Divine” Sarah Bernhardt and Constant Coquelin.  Sarah was outraged and sued the distiller for using her likeness without her permission.  She won in French courts and the posters had to be taken down.

“Absinthe Parisianne” inflated the bottle to full body size and apparently showed two Paris actors,  apparently anonymous,  having one heck of a good time as they consume the Green Fairy. Note that the body of the bottle says “sante” -- health.  The reference probably was occasioned because absinthe increasingly was being portrayed as a dangerously addictive, psychoactive drug.  In stark contrast to the gayety shown in the drink’s advertising,  famous artists painted a different picture.

For example,. Edgar Degas, the French Impressionist known for his upbeat pictures of ballet dancers and horses, here switched moods to give us a picture of a man and woman in a Paris dive drinking the verdant liquid.  The looks of vacant hopelessness on their faces bespeaks a tragic way of life.  Picasso in 1912 pictured a Pernod absinthe bottle done in a Cubist mode that seemed neutral about the drink.   A later picture painted a different picture,  showing a woman with a glass of absinthe with an abstracted glaze that is not unlike that of the Degas.

Perhaps the most gripping depiction of absinthe addiction was that of Felicien Rops, a Belgian artist and engraver who began his career in the 1850s.   In the black and white lithographic print shown here he shows us a young woman prostitute standing outside a dance hall.  One author has said of this image:  “M. Rops has created a type of woman that we will dream of...the type of absinthe drinker who, brutalized and hungry, grows very more menacing and voracious...the girl bitten by the green poison....”

Images like these helped to fire public opinion about the dangers of absinthe.  It was said to contain a chemical compound that caused addictive harmful effects.   By 1915 the liquor had been banned in many countries of Europe, including France, and the United States.  Even Switzerland, where it had been invented and manufactured by four generations of the Kubler family,  joined the ban.  Its prohibition there at midnight on December 7, 1910, engendered a satirical poster. The French title on the sign read “The End of the “Green Fairy.”  The fairy apparently was the half nude woman at the bottom of the picture stabbed to death with a large sword.

Although widely denounced, even up to the 1970s, there is little evidence that absinthe carried any more risks than any other spirits.  The problems identified likely were the result of the high alcoholic content.  Moreover the beverage was cheap and available to people of ordinary means.  Britain had a similar problem in the 1700s with gin.   Moreover, any beverage approaching 148 proof is likely to have rapid and deleterious effects.

With more scientific knowledge, countries one by one have been legitimizing absinthe again.  In 2006 the United States repealed its 92-year ban on the liquor.  The Kubler heirs got back in the business of making and marketing the drink.  Other brands followed.  There was enthusiasm that the appetite of Americans for this exotic and mysterious drink would be massive.  One major U.S. liquor wholesaler launched a major Kubler sales effort in all 50 states.  At first that company’s hopes seem realized, but as time has gone on, sales have slumped significantly.

It turns out that with only moderate alcohol levels permitted, those experimental first bottles failed to cause any distinctive highs or hallucinations.  People began to wonder what all the fuss had been about.  Moreover, a strong taste for licorice is not general in the U.S. drinking public.   Absinthe may always have its advocates but it will not replace the martini in America.  Whether pro and con, however, the “Green Fairy” has made a permanent contribution to world art.

The Genteel Fad of Painting on Pottery

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, painting on china pottery became a huge fad, akin to knitting macramé in a later day.  Once painted, the ceramic was fired again to set the overglaze.  Probably fueled by the beauty of Limoge vases like the one shown here,  tens of thousands of American women and girls took up the pursuit as a respectable avocation, some for pocket money, others to pass the time. 

Who can say what starts a fad?  It may have been a book by James Carter Beard in 1882 entitled “Painting on China: What to Paint and How to Paint it: A Hand-Book of Practical Instruction in Overglaze Painting for Amateurs in the Decoration of Hard Porcelain.”  Or it may have been the thousands of “blanks,” unpainted white, china forms shipped to the U.S. from France.  Entire local stores were established to sell the blanks and appropriate paints and brushes.  Many featured small kilns to fire and seal the decoration.

It did not take long for a prominent Ohio pottery, Knowles, Taylor & Knowles (KT&K),  to realize that there was a large and expanding market for plain white bottles.  Its East Liverpool factory is shown here as it looked in 1887.  While American china may not have competed with France in its fine qualities, it took paint equally well and moreover was less expensive and more durable.

As a result, KT&K made a major line of merchandise a jug shape that it also sold with decorated labels to whiskey dealers.  These ceramics were notable for their bulbous shape, their extended lip and, most of all, their handle that appeared to be a snake swallowing his tail.  KT&K sold thousands of these jugs throughout the United States to artists of varied talents, all eager to grab a paint brush and make their mark.

Not all such jugs, however, were the necessarily the product of talented (or not so) amateurs.  Timothy J. Kearns in his informative book, “Knowles, Taylor & Knowles:  American Bone China,” points out that the company itself employed artists who used the jug to produce items of beauty.  The subject matter for both professional and amateur generally were similar, commonly portraits, flowers, foliage,and fruit.

One way to make the distinction between pro and amateur is if the artist signed the artifact at the pottery itself.  Here is shown a highly sophisticated design of maroon flowers with a gilded handle, next, and lip.  It almost certainly was factory-produced and has been marked by the artist “McCutcheon.”  KT&K probably sold these jugs among its line of ceramics for home decoration and may also have used them as demonstration pieces for advertising purposes.   As in: “See ladies, what lovely objects can be made with our blanks!”

The next example, with pink flowers, bears a strong resemblance to the McCutcheon jug.  It is, however, unsigned.  Kearns speculates that most factory artists did not mark their pieces because they were paid by each completed item and that it was not worth the cost to the artist in time and money to sign and date each piece.  The jug with the portrait of a woman appears to be a transfer printed image. It would have been virtually impossible to accomplish at home so almost certainly was produced by KT&K artisans.

The next jug, depicting leaves and berries, is not so easily identified.  It well could have been the product of a talented young mother working in on her kitchen table in Keokuk, Iowa.   The distinction between professional and amateur also blurs when it comes to present value.  The key here is good design and good artistry, as those shown above.  Clearly amateur efforts, however, are regularly offered on Internet auction sites for substantial sums.  One such example is a thistle-decor jug where the design is interesting but clearly overwhelms the jug and handle has turned a dreary mud color.   The horse jug that follows is also a poor subject for the jug shape and, in this case, awkwardly drawn.

More intriguing are the homegrown artists who have taken a KT&K whiskey jug and overlaid it with their own designs, sometimes letting the part of the original label show.  This is evident in the jug with roses.  Note that in the lower left corner the mark of the Klein Bros. Cincinnati liquor dealership is still evident  The next jug is truly bizarre.  Amidst that those black streaks one can still make out the label of a Meredith Diamond Club Rye bottle.  That whiskey was a product of East Liverpool itself.

The passion for painting jugs ebbed sharply during the 1920s and KT&K went into bankruptcy in East Liverpool about 1923.  Nonetheless, the jug with the snake swallowing his tail goes on and on in professional, amateur and commercial guises, actively auctioned virtually every day.   KT&K may have thought they were “firing blanks” but they clearly hit the target at least for a brief time in history.

The Return of Uncle Sam, Whiskey Salesman

My post of October 2011 featured examples of American whiskey distillers and dealers using the 1897 “Bottled-in-Bond” Act as an excuse to claim that the U.S. Government was behind the quality of their liquor.  Frequently they resorted to images of Uncle Sam pitching their product to get the message across.  In subsequent months I have been able to collect additional images of the gallant old gentleman selling whiskey.

The Act required that the whiskey was (and still is) produced according to a set of Federal guidelines. The distiller sealed the results in bonded warehouses and marketed the aged product under proprietary names that came with a guarantee of integrity from the United States Government.  The federal OK 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.  When the law was new, canny whiskey men saw great advantage in using Uncle Sam in their advertising.

Among them was Asher Guckenheimer.  He founded his Pittsburgh distillery 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.   Guckenheimer, possibly more than any of his competitors, used Uncle Sam in a wide variety of ads, many in black and white for newspaper use.  Here, however, he is represented by a color ad that depicts him “standing behind” a large bottle of “Good Old Guckenheimer.”

Old Beechwood was a brand from the Vogt-Applegate Co. of Louisville.
Col. C. L. Applegate first forges onto the scene in 1876 when he and a brother, Edward, purchased land in the small town of Yelvington, Daviess County, Kentucky.  The brothers planned a new facility for rectifying, bottling and wholesaling whiskey.   With financing from Henry Vogt of the Vogt Machine Company in Louisville, the Vogt-Applegate Co. was founded and began operation.

The Colonel was a vice president and the company pitchman.  The Louisville offices were located at 236 Fourth Street but eventually moved onto Whiskey Row at 102-104 E. Main Street.   As Vogt-Applegate met with success, the company opened branches in Kansas City and Chattanooga.  “Old Beechwood” was the company’s  flagship label, advertised widely both regionally and nationally.  In this ad, Uncle Sam is pointing out the green stamp that identifies the whiskey as bottled in bond.

Applegate’s fellow Louisville whiskey man,  Jesse Moore, appropriated Uncle Sam for a poster advertising a whiskey that bore Jesse’s name.  He shows the old gentleman flying over the earth on a whiskey barrel, trailed by an American flag.  The ad claimed that Jesse Moore’s whiskey was the purest and best production.

This company was founded immediately after the Civil War in 1866 by Moore and continued by his son, George H. Moore.  The latter formed a partnership with a Pennsylvania man,  Henry Browne Hunt.   The brand became popular throughout the West and eventually had outlets in New York, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, Kansas City, New Orleans, Indianapolis, Louisville, Denver, San Diego and San Francisco. The whiskey was being supplied by the Fern Cliff Distillery of Louisville.

The American flag frequently figures prominently in these ads.  For example, Samuel Worman began a wholesale liquor business in Philadelphia with a partner named Fluck about 1872.  Two years later Fluck was gone and Worman’s name alone was on the company letterhead.  The firm was located sequentially at two addresses on the city’s North Second Street. “Golden Drop” was the firm’s flagship brand. The Worman Co. disappeared from Philadelphia business directories after 1912.

Part of a prominent West Coast whiskey family,  John F. Cutter founded a whiskey company in San Francisco about 1870, as claimed in the ad.  He later sold the brand to Edward M. Martin, an Irish immigrant.  After Cutter’s death in 1880, the company appears to have continued to market J. F. Cutter Rye as well as other brands.   This ad shows a tiny Uncle Sam, apparently standing on a table, recommending Cutter products.  A glass and a burning cigar suggest a second party is in the room.

One whiskey outfit not only appropriated him as its pitchman, but actually named its products as “Uncle Sam Brand Whiskey and Brandy.”  The image here is a letterhead showing Sam sitting with a jug of whiskey from the U.S. Distilling Company of Crouse, North Carolina.  My research has yield minimal information about this company.

In 1893  George Gambrill of Baltimore registered Roxbury Rye as a brand with the government, with a distillery in Roxbury, Maryland,  a village in Washington County  about twenty-three miles from Baltimore.  Despite being located in Maryland, he incorporated the company in West Virginia, probably to avoid taxes.  An energetic salesman, Gambrill built Roxbury Rye into a nationally recognized brand in relatively few years.

Gambrill, however, had problems keeping on the right  side of the law.  Speculating on wheat futures, he sustained financial losses that authorities thought added up to out and out fraud.  As a result Gambrill was hauled into court in 1910, accused of putting up the same whiskey as collateral for separate, forfeited loans totaling a half million dollars.  He was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to four years in prison.  His Roxbury distillery was shut down and George exited the liquor business but wiggled out of serving any time in prison.  View in context his reference to Uncle Sam seems particularly brazened.

I.W. Harper, a brand that is still available on shelves today, was from the Bernheim brothers, Bernard and Isaac.  They arrived in the United States from Germany with pennies in their pockets and found a friendly welcome with the Uri whiskey family of Paducah, Kentucky.  Finding Paducah too constraining, the pair decamped to Louisville in 1888 and ultimately became the most successful and prosperous distillers in Kentucky.  The Bernheim’s Uncle Sam is clearly in a party mood, holding aloft a cocktail glass full of booze while a comely lady friend joins in the toast.

This coupling of the old gentleman with a female ushers in two ads that make use of national symbols, in effect doubling the dose of patriotism being implied.  One lady is the Spirit of Freedom, known by her floppy hat and flowing gown.  Her statue stands atop the dome of the U.S. Capital building.  Here she is assisting Sam hold up a banner for two Fleischmann brands against a back drop of American flags. The Fleischmann Company, headquartered in Cincinnati, was an offshoot of the famous yeast manufacturers.  Another name that survived Prohibition, Fleischmann today is known chiefly for its gin.

Even a Scotch whisky saw the benefit of employing a debonair Uncle Sam in its advertising, even coupling him with another famous American symbol, Lady Liberty.   Both are saluting a foreign-made whiskey,  Haig & Haig.  The Scottish Haig distilling family in 1888 strongly targeted markets in the United States and ads like this were the result until the advent of Prohibition in 1920.  Unlike the other images shown above,  this ad was not generated by the bottled in bond legislation which did not apply to imported whiskey.

Our last Uncle Sam is of contemporary origins.  It is an imaginative takeoff of the famous World Two poster which showed the same pointing figure and bore the motto “Uncle Sam Wants You.”  The original was meant to spur enlistment's during the Second World War. This sign, by contrast, urges us to head for a cocktail lounge.   Wild Turkey is a premium brand of bourbon made in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.

President McKinley: A Life and Death in Glass

As the “Mother of Presidents,”  the State of Ohio has produced eight, of whom the one enjoying the highest ranking among U.S. Chief Executives has been William McKinley.  Another distinction of McKinley terms in office was the proliferation of campaign souvenirs, particularly those in glass.  As a result it is possible to trace the life -- and tragic death -- of our 25th President through a series of such artifacts.

Born in Niles, Ohio, in 1843, McKinley was the last American President to have served in the Civil War,  beginning as a private in the Union Army.   Here in a glass slide is a photograph of William as a young soldier.  He looks somewhat apprehensive in this portrait but went on to serve with distinction and rose to the rank of brevet major before the end of the conflict.  After the war, he settled in Canton, Ohio, where he practiced law.  In 1876 he was elected to Congress where he served seven terms.  He gave his name to protective tariff legislation.  It proved unpopular with his constituents and he was defeated for reelection in 1890.

Undaunted, he ran for governor of Ohio in 1891, won and was reelected in 1893, proving to be an able political leader.  A paperweight  showing a younger McKinley probably dates from his tenure as governor.  With the help of his close advisor,  Cleveland’s Mark Hanna,  he won the Republic nomination for President in 1896,  amid a deep economic  recession. McKinley was pitted against William Jennings Bryan whose Democratic Party was blamed for the country’s woes and he won handily.

McKinley’s first campaign was notable for the variety of souvenir items it produced.  Among glassware was a saucer that had his profile molded at the center, surrounded by stars.  His slogan,  “Protection and Plenty,”  was a reference to his identification with  high “protective” tariffs,  which had regained popularity.  As the campaign proceeded, it became clear that the Ohioan would win.  A drinking glass with his face etched in it expressed that confidence.
Paperweights were a favorite campaign item.  McKinley’s supporters issued one showing the candidate with his proposed vice president,  Garrett Hobart.  Hobart was the presiding officer of the New Jersey State Senate and highly popular with Republican leaders. 

McKinley proved to be a very successful President during his first term.  The country experienced rapid economic growth.  He pushed through Congress increased tariffs to protect American manufacturers and jobs.  Overseas, he led the Nation in the successful Spanish-American War that saw the vast expansion of U.S. possessions overseas to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines.   Increasingly popular,  McKinley was celebrated in numerous glass paperweights, three of them shown here.

McKinley moved into his second campaign in 1900 riding a tide of popularity but without his vice president.  Hobart had died in office in 1899, so a new running mate was needed.  Theodore Roosevelt, a hero of the Spanish-American War and governor of New York, was chosen.  Their images appeared together on a label-under-glass canteen, a reminder of the military backgrounds of both candidates.  The pair also were captured on glass paperweights.

McKinley was only a few months into his second term when he was shot and fatally wounded on September 6, 1901, inside the Temple of Music on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.  He was shaking hands with members of the public when he was shot by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist. The President died on September 14 from gangrene caused by the bullet wounds.  A glass paperweight from 1901 memorialized the occasion, showing McKinley juxtaposed against  a photo of the Temple of Music.
A nation in mourning produced a number of items commemorating the martyrdom of the popular President.   Among the most popular was a pressed glass oval bread plate produced in 1902.  Measuring 10.5 inches the plate featured a leaf pattern along the rim and stippled features including the cameo image of McKinley.  Framing his standing figure, the plate was embossed with the words "It is God’s Way" and "His Will Be Done.”  The phrases repeat those McKinley said to have uttered on his deathbed.

As political campaigns and memorial items have changed through the years, the number of glass artifacts has been greatly reduced as plastic and other materials have emerged.  McKinley’s life and death seems to be the one most captured in the vitreous mode.  There  are dozens more glass items, especially paperweights, bearing his image.   This suggests a fertile field for the historical glass collector.