NATIONAL INSULATOR ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER

Here is the link to the NIA Newsletter fall of 2003.    EC&M scam.

www.nia.org/drippoints/archive/DP_fall_2003.pdf



It's long,  but is a very interesting read.  

E.C. & M. ~~ & M & M & more M.

HOLY CRAP!!  What the heck is going on. 

Have you been following the "pressed glass" in Pole Top Auctions?    I admit,  I'm the dude that is usually late to the party but come on.... this is ridiculous. 
Move over Clubhouse,   don't look back Cassins,  another form of western glass is on it's way to the moon!

I have several good friends that enjoy these heavy glass objects,   heck,  I like 'um.   I even thought I might enjoy owning a couple of the less common greenish or blue shades...  that was before I finally realized "that train has left the station"  for me.   At the Las Vegas Show I got a reality check from Dennis E., when he told me he was the winning bidder of a highly acclaimed / borderline fantastic E.C.&M.  

Ok,  I'll bite....    what did it cost you ... says me.  

Good thing I was sitting down,  or you could have knocked me over with a feather. 

Let's just say it was a lot of dough!!   

But compared to the price these E.C.&M.s,  from the Patocka Collection,  are getting hammered down at... looks like he was way ahead of the pack.     Check out the results on line.... be sitting down!! 

Like all of you,  I enjoy many different aspects of Western collecting.    Bottles, insulators, advertising,  gold rush items,   California gold rush history,  gold rush pioneer coinage... now there is a category that will make your palms sweat before making an addition to the "little collection".    

I think it's getting too late in the game for me to be getting into this "heavy glass".    I'll just have to enjoy it from a distance.  

Too many things I like!!!    Not enough   M 

It is really amazing to me how well the insulator hobby has recovered from the E.C. &M. fraud of a few years ago.   Some dedicated western collectors helped put an end to that potentially devastating scam!    Phony specimens have been identified,  and pretty much corralled I have been told.   If these prices are any indication... looks like confidence restored.

The story of the capture of the a-hole that allegedly faked the ECM's is fantastic.  Allegedly my arse!  They caught him with the moulds.  Very worthy of a post..  anyone have a copy?  Is there a copy??   

Crazy Jakes!

Since I am apparently unable to extract a nice whiskey or bitters from the Earth, I thought I would show a few of the 50 or so jamaica Gingers in my collection. I have a nice run of greens, but take a look at the swirly, cruddy, bubbly, chunky, crooked, rejects in this grouping! I seem to be a Jamaica Ginger digger these days, though a few in my collection have come from shows, or other diggers. While Bryant's and Cassins were coming out of the ground in S.F. in 1998, Mike A. and I were the lucky ones who found a hole full of jakes...who needs a couple Bryant's anyway? I guess every bottle does not have to be big bucks to be beautifully crude and collectible. From left to right: McMillan & Kester with a flat base, and incredible crudity;E.G. Lyon's with a flat base, and foamy with bubbles; Dr. Barnes J.R. Gates, with a million bubbles; Ice blue McMillan & Kester with swirles, and junk in the glass; Jade milk McMillan Kester that is so bubbly, you cannot see the embossing, but it is fully embossed, and not stained; Dr.Barnes R.Hall which is one of the earliest of the S.F. jakes. I know there are some great jake collections out there, and they are getting pretty difficult to acquire...so I will just dig a few more!

G.O. BLAKE'S BOURBON CO. KY. WHISKEY

Here is a nice early brand.   G.O. Blake patent application in March 1872 indicates that they had not used the Trademark as of that date,  but were about ready to start.


Pond, Reynolds  ~~~ More, Reynolds.    Here is my run... 3 on the left are Pond, Reynolds.   The dark one has that reddish or almost a slight puce tint that you sometimes find in the early fifths. 

We don't find these in UT.   Two of the later Clark's,  Samual More bottles were found here. 
The strong hold for these Blakes is in Nevada.   In, and around, Austin and Eureka.   

 SOLE AGENTS FOR THE PACIFIC COAST    gotta love that!!


These are big bodied fifths..  "the big boys" as I called them before.   I measured around several of my fifths for some comparison...  Blakes, Pond-Reynolds - 26.2 cm,   Cutter, Hotaling non crown - 26.1 cm,  J.F. Cutter, the later curved R variant - 25.5 cm.    This later J.F. is noticeably more slender than the older variants.   Just more capacity reduction going on I guess.   E. Marting figured it out,  Hotaling figured it out, probably Moore, Hunt as well... haven't measured.  Getting about 12 extra fifths per barrel with the slightly smaller "fifth".
These old boy's...  Reynolds & More... can't blame Pond I guess... stayed with that same mould for all those years.   How much would a new mould have cost??      

I related the story of early digger Willie M. of Austin.   He and 3 buddies dug in the Reese River area in the 1960's and 1970's.   Permissions were easy for Willie,  he lived in town and knew everyone.  That was before out of town digging pressure had ramped up the blood pressure of the locals.   Anyway, they had dug a bunch of bottles,  a bunch of good bottles... Austin is a bourbon town, needless to say they had a few nice fifths.   They had cut into a huge trash layer during some U.S. 50 roadwork back in the day... kept the boys in digging for the entire summer.    About the time that ran out,  and other immed. hot spots had played out,  Willie decided to get working on the 'honey do' list.  How about that little addition to the house.  
Digging the footings for the addition, Willie clipped part of the top off a small privy.   Small but loaded!!
Kinda like the great Teakettle dig,  these things grow and grow.   Just last year I had a shop owner in Austin tell me Willie found 35 Blakes in that hole.  I visited with Willie in 1996 and he told me he had found 14.  All but one in good shape.  Not a bad backyard find..   I wonder what his digging buddies backyards looked like after Willie hit the jackpot! 

Bottle Making Mysteries

Here is an interesting website that contains some information about bottle moulds,  bottle manufacture, etc. 
Check out his posting on "mold cavity half-leaf repair marks".    We have all seen these on bottles,  there was an article on these marks in the "Antique Bottle and Glass Collector".    I have a Shriver's Oyster Ketchup  with that exact mark,   I just sold a Boley soda with similar mark.
Interesting stuff...     hat tip to Red Mathews

here's the link:
www.bottlemysteries.com/             



Half leaf "repair mark"~~  not so much.     Not a repair patch to the bottle.   Not a repair to the mould.  

    As reported by Warren F.,   most likely a mark or anomaly created by the pinching and then re-centering of a bottle during the early stage of bottle formation.

Another picture from Ray Klingensmith's Auction#62. 

Probably newer than the bottles we are talking about in this post.

That mould boy on the upper right looks like a bottle pincher to me.  

PAT & SHIRLEY PATOCKA COLLECTION

I just received my hardbound copy of Ray Klingensmith's Auction #62.   Ray has been offering these for $14,  that includes postage.    I'm not an insulator collector,  I have found a few,  but the beauty of those San Francisco made gems is hard to ignore. 

I knew Pat Patocka for over thirty years.   Strange twist of fate back in 1974,  my mom had decided to move from Ogden, Ut. to take a job at McClellen AFB in Sacramento.  Pat ended up being her boss.   When my mom told him I had found a few threadless insulators while sloshing around in the mud and water in the early U.P. town of Corinne,  Pat was on the phone with me continually.   I ended up selling him quite a number of those S.Mckee and unembossed threadless "paperweights"...  heck I just wanted bottles.    We became good friends,  later with his involvement with the Auburn bottle show we continued our friendship and visited regularly right up to his passing in 2008. 

    

This Pole top/ Glass Discovery auction has a portion of Pat and Shirley's collection.   Going to take a couple of more auctions to sell it all I think.

Anyway, the long and short of it,  I wanted to have a few pictures of the glass that Pat had collected over the years.  So I bought a catalog.  

Hard bound catalog for 14 bucks....  are you kidding me.    I'm so tight that I screw my shoes off and on,  but I can go $14.

When it arrived,  SWEET!!   Western glass, glass making history,  western telegraph history!    That's just half the catalog.   The other half is quite a grouping of beautiful bottles.    Hostetter collectors have a few real nice ones to bid on. 

 

So,  if you haven't spent your $14 for the catalog,  do it quick before he runs out of them.   I don't know if Ray is going to offer more of these hard bound catalogs,  I don't know how he can do it for this price,  but this one is fantastic.

If any of you foothill diggers/metal detectorists find one of these cast iron insulators...   well,  now you know what it is!!

Thos. Taylor

Here is a very interesting piece which pretty much has it all as far as I am concerned. One of the most exciting Western whiskey cylinders is the Thos. Taylor Importers, Virginia, N. This paper is after these bottles were made I believe, but is a nice piece of history none the less. With "Virginia, Nev." "Wells Fargo & Co. Bank" "Thos. Taylor & Co." and "Washoe Club", the references to several Nevada, and mining concerns are on this one piece. Perhaps another "blogger" could post some detailed history on Thos. Taylor, and his bottles.