Where Have all the CUTTER'S Gone?

I received a mail yesterday from a fellow collector and dealer in Western Whiskeyana. He was wondering if I had any Cutter fifths that I wanted to sell. Cutter fifths? Hmm.. I took a look at my Cutter's and thought - sell?- heck, I need to buy a few, I'm kinda' short on Cutter's for a guy that collects western whiskies.

All of a sudden it dawned on me "Hey, where are all those Cutter's you saw on the tables at bottle shows?" A while back someone I knew always had a few Cutter's for sale, and come to think of it, I haven't seen a decent Cutter up for grabs in a while. This got me to thinking.....

I fired up the laptop and dialed into Western Glob Top Whiskies to take a look at any information I could find on the disappearing consummate western fifth.

Now things were coming into perspective. Heck, there were no less than 22 posts on Cutter whiskey bottles. The first post I read was from a collector in San Diego that had in one day purchased or traded for 2 Cutter whiskies at a BBQ and 2 more at a bottle show the next morning. This same collector posted a picture on the American Bottle Auctions site showing his color run of 5 star-shield fifths.

The earlier post titled "J.F. Cutter Star in Shield" showed pictures of 29 different Cutter fifths from about 5 different collectors. That's a rough average of about 6 Cutter bottles per collector.

Now things were getting interesting...

Seems to me this western whiskey blog has really made certain collectors more aware of the so-called lowly Cutter bottle. Why just the other day I was talking to a whiskey collector and he was relating to me the fun he was having putting together a "run" of Bottled By globby fifths. Why, Bottled By fifths? Here's what I was told by a beginning collector. "Its a way collectors that can't hack the buy in price of high dollar fifths can put together a grouping to be proud of. It takes as much time and effort to put together a run of lower value fifths as it does high ticket ones and the satisfaction is just as great without breaking the bank!" I don't even own a Bottled BY fifth, but maybe I better get one before they are all gone.

Don't even talk to me about color runs.... seems like every western whiskey collector I talk to has a color run of some Cutter variant.

Have you tried to buy a Star-Shield fifth lately? Those $100 fifths now start at $300 and go on up in price depending on the color. And how about the 4 piece circle Cutter, when was the last time you saw one of those for sale? These "circle's" are coveted and bought & sold in the parking lots of bottle shows - like they were McKenna's or Teakettle's.

Cutter OK's start at $200 - 225 if you can find one and the tool top version, that used to be a $15 bottle, now starts at around $100.

In this old collector's opinion the Cutter fifth has finally started to get the respect that it deserves.

So....... better start stocking up on those Cutter's -while there are still some left !!!

More Old Kirk

Following the A.P. Hotaling Co's sale of the J.H.Cutter Agency to Sherwood and Sherwood, they offered Old Kirk Whiskey as their proprietary brand. To my knowledge, no embossed bottles were blown, so the product came in paper labeled bottles, only. Since Old Kirk was sold until the advent of prohibition, and post-earthquake and fire, many examples of their advertising survives to this day. Many of these pieces are made from brass, a metal that easily last through burial in a privy or trash pit. Below are a few of the Old Kirk items in my collection.

SAN DIEGO SHOW & MISC.

May & June 2009: Whiskey Review

I have had an active May and June in terms of Whiskey dealings....I was lucky to dig a mint 1/2 pint Kane, O'Leary flask (No. 33) in Northern California. Weeks later, I acquired the matching counterpart fifth (No. 75) for a bargain of $2,000. The price was too good to be true for the fifth, as I quickly returned it for a refund after finding two annealing checks in rather noticeable locations. It was a super example in terms of color and crudity (especially for a slug plate fifth), but damage is damage – simply too risky of a buy in this economy where glass falls a bit lower down on the hierarchy of needs. I'm going to be patient and wait it out for another nice one, even if its 10-15 years down the road.

We had a BBQ at our house in San Diego the night before the bottle show which allowed for a little bottle-dealing on the side....I picked up two nice J.F. Cutter fifths (No. 46 / Variant 4's) as part of a trade/buy-out towards my O.K. Old Castle Fifth (No. 21) and Shoulder Crown Hotaling Fifth (No. 47). I ended up with both J.F.'s ($300 that we assigned to each of them) plus an additional $1,600 my way.

I spent most of my $1,600 at an old-timers table the very next day at the San Diego Bottle Show. I picked up a green Bird Cutter fifth (No. 42), a yellow glob top Lilienthal fifth (No. 104), a crude O.K. Cutter (No. 41), and a light-colored E.A. Fargo fifth that has a sloppy transitional top. The old-time seller also had a nice example of a Durham Whiskey (Footed / No. 93) sporting a sticker of $925 and a golden-yellow-amber example of the Milton J. Hardy Cutter (No. 35) for a reasonable $1,050. I passed on the Durham at his table since I recently picked mine up for a few hundred bucks less. His Durham had fewer scratches than mine and was pretty sparkly for an eastern-blown fifth, but not quite as crude and whittled as the example that I've decided to keep for awhile.

One of many highlights of the San Diego show arrived in the contents of two 1870's soda bottles. My friend, Dave Garcia, brought an ice cooler over to our sales table with two "Champagne Mead" soda bottles inside – they were both filled with the original "mead recipe." A few of us popped them opened and shared the in the novelty of this once refreshing beverage – and boy, it had quite a kick to it!

I've also managed to pick up a bunch of Jesse Moore fifths in the past few weeks and have begun to realize just how many different mold variations exist amongst the tooled-tops alone! There must be somewhere in the neighbor hood of 15 different variations of the tooled-top Jesse Moore fifths out there! Does anyone really know? Some of the variations are slight (different antlers, different lettering, different bases, etc.), but nonetheless, they are indeed different! One of the late tooled variants was given to me for free from my good friend Jon Lawson, another my dad picked up from an antique store in Median, NV for $22, and I purchased three others at the San Diego show for $15, $40, and $40 based on their shade of color, character, and whether they had a crude transitional tool-top or the normal "later" tooled top.

As far as Circle Cutters go, I picked up two slightly different "Bottled By" variants featuring tooled tops for $15 and $20 each, as part of my collection of Cutters at-large.

One other addition came in the form of a ½ pint Lilienthal Distillers flask, featuring a nice crude tooled-top (No. 39). So I was able to complete my Lilienthal pairing for what the price of the yellow fifth probably should have been alone! But I may try to upgrade the flask part of the equation with an example of the Lilienthal coffin flask (No. 40)…if I can find one, that is! My dad, Larry has also joined in on the Lilienthal parade and recently added two tougher colors to his run of High S.F. Union Oval variants (No. 36).

In addition to all my springtime digs and early summer buys, I also had a lucky strike at an antique store's liquidation sale, where I picked up about 50 "fun" miscellaneous bottles for about two dollars each! I can't wait to see what unfolds between now and the National Show in August!

~Lance C. Westfall

OLD KIRK WINDOW

This article submitted by follower -- "CASTLE"

The Window

This window was made in San Francisco and is signed Moretti and Sammann 233-10st SF

Atillio Moretti had a long career in San Francisco as an artist, fresco painter, and interior decorator.

Detlef Sammann was a prominent artist who decorated several rooms in the White House during President Harrison's administration. He was an academic painter in the California Impressionist style and exhibited at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.

Included in their stained glass commissions is the window over the entrance to the Stanford Memorial Chapel.

Old Kirk and The San Francisco Earthquake

As of Friday April the 20th 1906, San Francisco was still on fire. The Great Earthquake had happened two days earlier, but the Fire (or fires) that devastated the city were still well underway.

This is the story of a single building, but one of vital importance to the delicate Western palette: AP Hotaling & Co.'s warehouse at 451 Jackson Street the largest depository of whiskey on the West Coast. Hotaling's warehouse was threatened on the very first day of the fire. This particular blaze was one of the many inspired by rampant and ill-advised dynamiting.

The warehouse was threatened and saved three times. Once by a brave fireman who hacked off smoldering roof cornices. The second savior was a single length of hose from a Navy fireboat off the Embarcadero that pumped sea water eleven blocks to the warehouse. The final salvation was a bucket brigade that slopped a compote of sewage and salt water seepage from the adjacent construction site. The evil-smelling stuff made a steam that was suffocating as it evaporated on the roasting woodwork. But that muck did the trick. The opposite side of Jackson was completely destroyed — but on this Friday, April 20th — Hotaling's Whiskey was saved. Every other stock of whiskey in the city had been destroyed, but Hotaling's — by the grace of God, man, sewage, and the Navy — had been spared.

The burning of San Francisco was greeted by a good many clergyman as divine retribution for its wicked, wicked ways. The fact that houses of worship were incinerated right along with everything else — and that Hotaling's whiskey warehouse was spared — inspired an immortal piece of doggerel by poet and wit Charles Kellogg Field:

'If, as they say, God spanked the town
For being over frisky,
Why did He burn the churches down
And save Hotaling's whiskey?'"

That last line originally read "and saved Old Kirk's Whiskey", since that was the bottling name of the liquor — but somebody at Hotaling's wisely changed the last line of the verse for advertising purposes — and it stuck.

Castle

George Parker and Cutter whiskey

This the trademark applied for by Hardy and Moorman, where George Parker was made agent for J.H.Cutter whiskey. His signature is seen as the representative of Hardy and Moorman. This is a very early trade mark, No 23, and is dated May 12, 1864, but the application was completed, signed, and witnessed 5 days prior to that. This claim is for casks, corks and packages; there were no embossed bottles known to have been made at this time. The file contained no samples of packaging, labels, etc.

McFarlane fifth on fleaBay

This slug plate might not end up being a bad buy, if you really need one. Looks to have a nice applied top and way undervalued, so far.

Step right up - A new winner every minute!

Recently a bottle that appeared on Ebay caught my attention. Not because it was rare, but because of the way it was described. The teaser said "GLOPPY TOP old KELLOGG'S NELSON COUNTY whiskey bottle". The "hook" read
"old and authentic amber glass handblown Applied Gloppy Top KELLOGG'S NELSON COUNTY EXTRA KENTUCKY BOURBON WHISKEY W.L. CO SOLE AGENTS whiskey bottle 5th."

Well sir, you've got my attention. I could see it now; pigeon blood red, crude as can be, hammer whittled, with that classic German glop top and a touch of spillover. But wait, the photo shows your basic meat 'n potatoes, straight amber, turn of the century, Kellogg with a sloppy tool job that, I guess if you wished hard enough and you were inexperienced enough, could be passed off as a glop. A quick email to the seller cautioning them on the fact that it was a crude tool top was sent. The text read;

"I'd be very careful about representing this piece as a glop top. Simply, they do not exist in this mold configuration. The only glopped Kellogg's are the red whittled ones that were blown in Germany in the '90s. They are a totally different mold and are blood red; not to be confused with the Riley Patent IT's that were sloppily tooled here in the US and which come in various shades of ambers. I've had several domestics over the years that could be passed off as applied to a novice collector but have always erred on the side of conservatism and described them as "wannabe glops".

This one could come back to haunt you..."

The email was met with a polite thank you And so the auction continues. And true to W.C. Fields observation of a sucker being born every minute, not one but two, suckers continue to slug it out for ownership. So far, the ante is up to $162~ and change for a bottle that might maybe bring $75~ at a show on a stretch, if you could find a buyer. Not bad; if you can get away with it. To the sellers credit, they did add a post script, buried at the end of the listing saying that it may not be a glop after all.

However, this brings me to the point of the article; What, if anything, can be done to hold ebay sellers accountable? Ebay, has been, and continues to be, "The Wild West".

Step right up gentleman, pay your dues and take your chances, a new winner every minute...