J. R. Watkins Bottle.

J. R. Watkins Co. Bottle.
Probably 1920s or 1930s

The J. R. Watkins Company began in 1868 as a small home-based business in Plainview, Minnesota, founded by entrepreneur Joseph Ray Watkins.

Watkins distributed many different types of household products including cleaning products, food extracts and  flavorings, cosmetics,  home remedies, and other products.  (They did not actually make the bottles in which these products were contained.)   As business increased, in 1885 the company operations were moved from Plainview to Winona, Minnesota.

The very first bottles sold are assumed to date as far back as 1868, but I doubt that the very earliest containers were actually embossed with the “Watkins” name, but would have likely been “generic” hand blown bottles with a paper label affixed to indicate contents. (If anyone has more information on this, please contact me!)

By the very early 1870s, as business continued to expand,  it is likely that bottles were being embossed with Watkins or “J. R. Watkins Co.”   The earliest versions of the Watkins bottles were made in aqua glass, were handmade (with a tooled lip) and have the lip fashioned for a cork closure.  Later versions (I don’t know the exact year, but probably by the 1920s or early 1930s) have a threaded-style lip for a screw-on lid.

There are probably hundreds of slightly different Watkins bottle mold variants in existence that have been used over the last 140 years, with a variety of differences in font style, exact wording arrangement, size and shape of the bottle, and I imagine it would be a monumental task to find just one example of every single one of them.

Light aqua glass WATKINS medicine bottle, handblown with a tooled lip.  This type probably dates from sometime in the 1890s to 1910s. The base bears the mold number “64”.  The maker is unidentified as there is no glass manufacturer mark to be found.

Many of the bottles from the 1920s-1940s are quite common, and are usually in clear glass and rectangular in shape.  Sometimes the embossed company name is in a cursive font, and sometimes in a plain “block style lettering”. White milkglass salve or “ointment jars” were also sold.

Here is the link.

J. R. Watkins Company, Winona, MN ~ vintage glass bottles ~ Information. (glassbottlemarks.com)

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Seminole Milk Company, Jacksonville Fla. Half Pint Bottle. Circa 1927.

 

Newly Dug Seminole Milk Company Bottle
Jacksonville, FL.  Circa 1927.

This bottle reads as follows. 

HALF PINT
LIQUID
PROPERTY OF
AND CONTAINS
MILK OR CREAM
PASTEURIZED AND BOTTLED
BY
SEMINOLE MILK COMPANY
JACKSONVILLE, FLA.

 

It was not easy to get a good photo of this bottle.  Maybe I can get a better photo.  Even when the bottle is well lit and well positioned, the embossing has so many words that with the curvature of the bottle you can't capture all the text in a single photo.

The bottle is in great shape.  No cracks or chips.  It also has some great grip bumps around the neck.

The maker's mark is a 5/W, which indicates Winslow Glass Works, circa 1912 - 1927.  I read elsewhere that the Seminole Milk Company operated 1926 - 1936.  I'd place this bottle around 1927.  Great piece of Florida dairy history.

Brown Hicks' Capudine Bottle.

 

Hicks Capudine Bottle.

Henry Hicks had two drug stores in Raleigh, North Carolina.  He invented Capudine around 1900.  It became very popular, and he became wealthy.

Henry Hicks’ mansion still stands on Hillsboro Street, though, sadly, its grandiose porticoes have been long lost.

Interestingly, just as Hicks was achieving wealth and renown, the American Medical Association commenced a crackdown on patent cure-all medicines.

The Association analyzed Hicks’ Capudine and found the concoction to be “a brown, rather syrupy liquid, slightly alkaline to litmus, with an aromatic odor and a salty taste. Besides 8 percent alcohol, Capudine was found to contain sugar, aromatics, chlorides, caffeine, antipyrin and salicylates.” Yikes!

The AMA declared that Hicks’ Capudine was “a barefaced attempt to exploit both the medical profession and the public, [and that] this nostrum is probably preeminent in the annals of the ‘patent medicine’ business.”

Nonetheless, although Mr. Hicks died in 1940, the Capudine Chemical Co. continued to manufacture ‘medicinal cures’ in Raleigh into the early 1960s.

Source: Goodnight Raleigh | a look at the art, architecture, history, and people of the city at night

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