Well I'll Be...

One of my favorite movies of all time is Tombstone; the one with Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Sam Elliott, & Bill Paxton.

One of the many memorable lines, (and my favorite) went like this; Wyatt says, "Well, I'll be damned", to which Doc Holiday replied "You may indeed - if you get lucky".

I may be both~

While perusing the Reno Evening Gazzete November 12, 1887 edition, I stumbled across an advertisement on page 4 which clears up a mystery that's dogged us since John Thomas came out with his first book on western whiskies, back in the sixties.

John stated, "As far as known, nobody has found one of the Thistledew bottles with a label. This bottle is still only believed to come from the West." All but a couple of the few known Thistledew examples were recovered in Nevada, Utah and Idaho.

The advertisement spells it all out in a nice neat package. W.O.H. Martin / For Sale Wholesale & Retail / Sole Agent for Reno, Washoe County, and Lassen and Modoc Counties, California/.

Well John, you can't get much more "western" than the Silver State! Looks like Tommy Taylor has company now. Thistledew is a Nevada Whiskey.

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Just got an email from an acquaintance on Oahu. I stand corrected. At least two globby Thistledews have been dug in and around Honolulu. A little more "digging" turned up the reason;


This ad appeared on May 24,1886;

Followed by this one from the December 17, 1887 edition of the Hawaiian Gazette. Kinda gives a new meaning to crossover, eh?



















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Neat Stuff!

Here's a fresh example, dirt and all. Check out the drip on this puppy!

COMING THIS WEEKEND!

Morro Bay, California
Friday & Saturday March 23th & 24th 
 The San Luis Obispo Bottle Society’s 44th Annual Show and Sale
 Friday 1:00 pm to 6: 00 pm 
Saturday 9:00 am to 3:00 pm
at the Morro Bay Veterans Hall
209 Surf Street, Morro Bay, California.

From Layer To Cabinet...

Here is a fresh find from the soils of a Northern California province.  Just a A No. 1 JH Cutter, but in an appealing yellow coloration. Any bourbons being pulled out of Nevada ?

Oregon Token Flasks

 

Four Oregon Token Flasks

By Garth Ziegenhagen

Thomas called these Newman flasks, but the real Newman flask is embossed on the

bottom with C.Newman, Pat. Oct.10th 1876. Oregon has four of these emerald green

Token flasks and two of the unlisted ones are pictured below.

The other two are the

OLD O.I.C./ RYE



from Oregon Importing Co. and 



C.J. STUBLING/THE DALLES/ OREGON.

 Both of these flasks have appeared at Oregon Bottle Showʼs in the past.

The SARATOGA LIQUOR CO/ 245 ALDER ST./ PORTLAND,ORE

was owned by Harry R. Eaton and it was difficult to find him in the directories because he

was only in business for one year in 1911.

 It seems like most of these owners that moved around

would use these token flasks because a new token would much easier and cheaper

than embossing a flask. Also the token flask is one of the prettier flasks made. The

token could be placed upside down so it could be read while drinking it. To my

knowledge only one of these Saratoga Liquor Co. flasks is known in 2012.

OAK RUN/( logo)/ BOURBON

is attributed to W.J.VAN SCHUYVER & CO

as each of his initials W.J.V.S are incised inside the same logo used on his embossed

cylinders and his Cyrus Noble shot glass on page 120 in Barbara Edmonson's book.

William Van Schuyer was a partner in a saloon in Portland in 1866 and became the sole

owner in 1877. The company stayed in business until prohibition. The date of this token

flask is probably in the early 1900s.

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Shot glasses were also produced to advertise these brands.
Here's a few examples:

Many thanks to Margie Ornduff for bringing the Van Schuyver token flask to the Feb. 2012 Aurora Show

Shots courtesy of the Ken Schwartz collection.

Herman Braunschweiger - a fresh look

A series of articles for both glop and tool top collectors.

http://www.westernwhiskeytooltopgazette.com/2012/02/herman-braunschweiger-fresh-look.html

Under the radar.

Finances being what they are these days, I'm not as diligent about watching ebay as I once was. Sure, I still scan the offerings once in a while but I'm not focused like I was a few years back. Once in a while if something catches my eye, I'll bookmark it to see what it does.

About a week ago a listing "for an early amber wine bottle" appeared. Much to my surprise, a photo of a red whittled glop top J. Gundlach appeared. Now that's my idea of an old wine bottle!

The photo was lousy at best, but a little fiddling with Photoshop revealed what appeared to be a decent example. And the proportion of the shoulders sure seemed to vary from the fifth that we're accustomed to seeing. Could it be a quart?

Sure, it had a flash in the neck (actually the top) according to the description but still, how many have you seen in any condition? Thomas listed the mint value as about $2500~ back in 2002. One of the auction houses sold one for $3200~ plus fees around three years ago. Verrry interesting...

What would it go for, I wondered. I got my answer this morning when I remembered about the listing. Huh? $567.77~ Seems like someone got a buy!

This bottle sure seemed to slip under the radar.

S. Adolph & Co.

I have posted photo's of the pint size examples of this extremely rare Oregon flask...both the applied, and tooled top version. To date there are three known examples of the pint, while this half pint size remains unique. I acquired this flask directly from Anna Rose Adolph herself in the 1990s. It was found under a house next to a foundation in 1959. The flask was given to Anna Rose shortly thereafter and remained in the Adolph family until I was able to add it to my collection.

Anna Rose is the great, great Granddaughter of Sam Adolph himself, so the history of this particular flask is very meaningful to me. Sam had a saloon and brewery in Salem, from 1873-1886. It was blown about 1883 and while not air vented, has a tooled top. I actually feel these little half pint union oval western flasks are more attractive in many instances, and for some reason more rare than their pint size counterparts. Other than the Fleckenstein and Mayer half pints from Portland, the smaller size western amber flasks seem to typically be harder to come by. Possibly they were small enough to actually fit in a pocket, and therefore were carried everywhere until they were lost or broken. In any case this little piece of Oregon history is the only example to ever turn up in many decades of digging in the Northwest.