update to: "Blowing Smoke ..."

Please check out the interesting update (29 June 2024) with new photo at the boom of the 23 March 2024 blog post, "Blowing Smoke on the Ideal Victorian Lady." Just a little something extra, thanks to the contribution of one of my readers.

Come to Houston! Look into the Past through Amazing Glass

This is my personal invitation to you, my reader and my friend, to come to the most amazing assortment of bottles and glass that you’ll likely ever get to see in one place. But like watching for a meteor shower or a rainbow, you better be ready for it, before it’s gone forever. Give me a few minutes and I’ll tell you why this event will be something you’ll really enjoy.

     It’s important to me that you understand right here and now that everything I’m going to tell you about this once-in-a-lifetime event are my own thoughts and feelings about it – nobody put me up to doing a blog post about it – I’m doing it because I really think my friends and readers would enjoy it immensely if they visited even one or two days of the event. Many of the members of the Montgomery County Historical Commission and the Conroe Community Cemetery Research Project

read this blog, so please consider this your invitation to catch a rainbow of colorful memories that will stay with you for the rest of your life. I’m also not trying to list everything there is to do and see at this show – at the bottom of this post I will attach a link to the Event Information Packet that does a great job telling you about everything this show has in store for you – I strongly encourage you to look through it.

     Before we get too deep in the weeds, let me explain that I’m referring to the extravaganza that is being called Houston24 – the National Antique Bottle & Glass Expo. It’s a mega-event put on by the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors (FOHBC), the nationwide organization for people who love antique bottles and glass. It’s being held at the Hotel ZaZa Museum District in Houston, on 1-4 August, so it’s just a month away! The Expo is being hosted and underwritten by the Houston Museum of Natural Science  (across the street from Hotel ZaZa), which includes hosting two major bottle exhibitions at the museum during the Expo! Much more about what’s in it for you later in this blog post.

     Most of my friends who read my blog do so because they enjoy history. Stories of days long past, usually before our own lives began. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I capture this history primarily by looking at objects made of paper and glass – two of the most delicate, easily destroyed materials that man makes. Yet many paper and glass objects from centuries past survive into the 21st century. Paper items usually survive because they were tucked away in drawers, trunks, or books, but bottles are actually the “tough guys” of the antique world. I’ve been in many deep pits in the ground where only glass is found.

     The 18th and 19th century person didn’t just throw glass into their trash pits and outhouse holes, but that’s often the only thing that survives. There’s nothing like finding a bottle – ridiculously, improbably thin glass protecting empty space inside its fragile walls – completely intact, despite the literal tons of dirt and stones on top of it, cars parked over it, or even buildings constructed above it. Just crazy.

     Metal rusts and ultimately dissolves altogether; fabrics can’t stand up to moisture or bugs; leather rots and wood turns to mush in Mother Earth. Even we humans, who like to think of ourselves as the King of the Hill on this planet, so tough that we can beat anything nature throws at us, will someday end up in the ground where we will decay down to our bones – and eventually, as the Bible says, “unto dust thou shalt return.”

When it’s all over, cockroaches and bottles may be all that survive!

     Of the two, I only admire and collect bottles.

     Looking at an antique bottle is a transformative experience. You know you’re admiring a fragile old container that probably came out of the ground or from some dusty corner of a barn or attic, but there it is. Maybe the glass is a beautiful color that reminds you of honey, or strawberries, or the water in your swimming pool. Perhaps what catches your eye is the shape it was formed into – an old cabin, an ear of corn, or even a fish. You might even find yourself picking up a bottle that still has its ancient label promising the courageous customer to drink its contents for a cure of their annoying cough or even life-threatening cancer. Every one of them is a fabulous discovery with a story to tell. Look around – the tables at Houston24 are loaded with thousands of them. You find yourself standing in a living museum – a fantasy flea market of centuries-old treasures. You suddenly realize this is a great way to spend a day of your summer vacation!

     So, as promised, here are the things I’d like to tell you about this amazing event – in my own words. Like the song goes, these are a few of my favorite things …

A Rare National Event. This National Bottle and Glass Expo is a rare and exotic bird in its own right – no other bottle show in the country is quite like it. Every few years it shows up in different spots all over the U.S.A.; I believe there have been 36 expos over the last 47 years. This year’s expo in Houston is the first anywhere in Texas in the history of the FOHBC; I’m 69, so I strongly suspect that this will be the only expo in Texas in my lifetime. This is a NATIONAL EXPO – not just another show. If you live in Texas, you really need to visit this expo, before it’s gone forever!

Displays & Seminars. There are going to be a bunch of folks selling an amazing array of bottles, but there will also be 7 top-notch seminars and 17 killer displays to see. Collectors from around the country are pouring out their heart and soul to show you the pride of their collections through their presentations and displays. They spend months selecting which pieces and putting together awesome displays and fascinating seminars so that you can enjoy looking at and learning about them. The displayers pack up, transport, unpack, set up, display, pack up again, and transport them all back home and not a one earns a single penny for doing all this – we do it out of love and pride in our collections and to share what we have and what we know with everyone who comes by for a visit. That’s pure love, my friends. How can you not want to see all that love and passion in one place?

Kids on Display. Before I get off the subject of displays, I’ve got to share something very special that will be happening this year: Display Table #1 will have a display called “Kids Digging Texas,” put together by Grayson, Crosby, and Lyla – two brothers and a sister, ages 13, 9, and 7! They go bottle digging frequently with their dad and they will be showing some amazing bottles they have found, along

with others they enjoy collecting. Crosby will even have his book, Old Bottles, on display that he wrote and illustrated for a school project! These kids represent the future of our hobby, so please make sure to visit and talk with them about their display. Their enthusiasm and excitement about bottles will be a great way for you to start your experience at the show!

Variety of People. Something else I’m going to love about this show is the variety of people that are going to be there. For example: our displayers are coming from California, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Florida, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas; our seminar presenters are coming from California, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Texas; and we have attendees coming from more than half of the states in the U.S., plus Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Great Britain. How much fun it will be to meet fellow collectors and bottle enthusiasts from all over the country and the world. I am genuinely looking forward to making a bunch of new friends in this great hobby. Normally it might be tricky for a guy from Australia to have a conversation with a guy from Louisiana, but they both talk the language of antique bottles, so that story will have a happy ending!

Variety of Bottles. Let me help my non-bottle friends to have their eyes opened a little bit – here’s a pop-quiz:

In 20 seconds, how many kinds of bottles can you list out loud? Answer: There are lots and lots of bottle types! Your list may have had liquor bottles, soda bottles, perfume bottles, beer bottles, and, if you’re an old guy like me, you might even remember milk bottles. Well, just a hundred years ago, there were no liquids in unbreakable cartons, and glass bottles carried everything from candy to fire extinguisher chemicals! There will be a huge selection of bottle types being sold on the show floor and I will be learning what the bottle dealers are bringing to Houston right along with you! But since I’m in charge of the displays, I can tell you that just among those 17 displays you will see soda water bottles, cabin-shaped bottles, an extremely rare Indian bitters bottle, pontiled snuff bottles, Texas pottery, cider bottles, soda bottles, reverse glass signs and bottles, barbershop bottles and much more!

Partnered with a Major Museum! The FOHBC’s Houston24 Expo was clearly going to be a really big event in Houston no matter what, but its relationship with the Houston Museum of Natural Science turns this into a classic, once-in-a-lifetime event. The museum is hosting TWO major exhibitions of antique bottles while Houston24 is being held across the street. A world-class collection of American antique bottles and another of stunningly beautiful barber bottles. There will even be full-color exhibition catalogs of both exhibitions for sale. So you can go to the museum to be inspired by great glass treasures and then walk over to the show across the street to buy a bottle and start your own epic exhibition!

Dinosaur Banquet. On Friday night, August 2nd, the FOHBC and the Museum of Natural Science are joining together again to have a banquet right in the middle of the museum’s dinosaur exhibit! How amazing is this going to be – eating your meal under the massive skeletons of these ancient monsters, staring down at you from their hollow eyes, with giant teeth sizing you up as the next meal for their very empty stomachs! There’s no way you’re ever going to forget this evening among the dinosaurs!

“Glass in the Grass”. The genius behind Houston24 – the Wizard behind our Oz – is the passionate bottle collector and expert, Ferdinand Meyer V. On July 31st, one day before Houston24 begins, he and Elizabeth, his brave and equally skilled life partner, have added still more to the festivities for antique bottle and glass enthusiasts, by opening their Texas hacienda to a first-ever “Glass in the Grass” event. Under the shade of their pecan trees, dealers will be selling their amazing bottles from the tailgates of their trucks and the trunks of their cars. This event is free to the public. I believe this will become a

new Texas tradition – the Houston version of a very popular tailgating event that was held for years in Connecticut in the autumn.

     Some of the events, like the seminars and the Glass in the Grass are free and others cost just five bucks if you come on August 3rd or 4th (Saturday or Sunday). My seminar on Friday, for example, is one of the freebies – yup, I’m cheap – but I guarantee I’ll tell you some things about old bottles and history that you’ve never heard about before! Actually all three seminars on Friday and the two on Saturday are free to the public – and they’re all going to be extremely interesting!

     For all the details click on the link below. From the Kids Digging Texas to the Dinosaur Banquet, this is going to be one very special, Texas-sized event. Please plan on visiting Houston24 – you really will be glad you did. See you there!

I am going to be one of the seminar speakers and a displayer at Houston24. I hope to see YOU there, taking in my free seminar or visiting my display – just two of the many things to see and do at this great Houston experience.

Lynn Massachusetts history - History of medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century medicine

Diamond in the Rough

I don't decide what to write about while sitting in front of my keyboard; I go look at my collection and it tells me what's next. This was especially true earlier today: it became instantly clear that only one very special bottle would work for the post of April 27th – my birthday.

The bottle is wonderful on several levels. I found it in the dirt without digging; it came out of a dirt pile in perfect, sparkling mint condition; and it's a classic 19th century patent medicine, made in a time when the courts and law enforcement had no muscle to subdue even the most outrageous claims of a medicine to cure. And Mother Nature handed me this jewel on my birthday at a private party that she held just for me.

It was easily one of the most vivid birthday moments of my life. Early in the morning of April 27th, 1986, I arrived at a large playground in Revere, Massachusetts, with my metal detector in hand, looking forward to finding some Indian Head pennies and Mercury dimes, and maybe even a few Barber dimes from the previous generation of coinage. My dear to wife had given me the gift of time on my birthday morning, letting me leave her at home alone with our four children, ages 8, 7, 6, and 3, while I went off to play in the dirt, listening for tell-tale pings in my earphones and digging for tiny treasures. Those precious few hours alone were sure to be pure bliss, but it was about to get even better.

That early morning was absolutely perfect - bright sunshine with blue skies and puffy white clouds. The air was cool and crisp in its newness, and quickly giving way to the warmth of the sun's rays that made the leaves on trees overhead glow with amber brilliance. I was anxious for my buddy to arrive with his metal detector so that we could begin together and enjoy the camaraderie and friendly competition of finding things in the ground on this glorious morning. After a short while, I felt impatient to perhaps begin even without my friend. I had promised my sweetheart that I would be home by noon for the birthday party she and the kids were planning for me (I knew she would be able to keep them away from the cake and ice cream for only so long) and I was anxious to seize the day and look for treasures in the ground.

Oddly, there were two massive mounds of dirt in the middle of the playground, obviously dumped there recently for spreading across the grounds at some later date. The piles were like two small mountains, towering even higher than the swings and slide nearby. While I waited for my friend, I walked around the dirt piles, noticing the sun shining on pieces of glass here and there. I knew from my experiences at bottle digging that where there's glass there are likely bottles. I carefully pulled and poked at larger pieces of exposed glass, hoping to find a bottle in them thar hills. Chunk after chunk proved to be evidence of old bottles, none close to complete. But then I saw something that gave me the feeling inside that this was the one; the bottle mouth and neck were poking out of the dirt, looking like a subterranean life form sticking its head out of the ground, curious about the world above. I grasped it firmly, hoped for the best, and pulled.

My hands held it up to the sunlight while my mind did a quick inventory: mouth, lip, neck, shoulders, sides, and foot; no cracks, no nicks, no chips; light green like one of the many plants emerging in this New England springtime, and an extraordinary number of stretch lines all around its long neck, like evidence of quick growth towards the sun. And it had a name embossed on its main panel with Victorian-styled letters, hinting at its vintage. It read, "Dr. MILES' / RESTORATIVE / Blood Purifier". I stood there, stunned. I was so excited - thrilled would be more accurate. I cradled it like a newborn, protecting it as I brought it to the car. I took off my sweatshirt and wrapped it inside, like the present it was, then gently put it on the floor behind the driver's seat, the safest place I could imagine for this little beauty.

I went back to the two dirt piles and did my best to plow them down with my hands, hoping to find that Dr. Miles had a large family with him, or neighbors, or complete strangers nearby. But all I found were pieces of glass bodies that had been annihilated by ruthless trucks and backhoes. Dr. Miles became even more special for surviving the widespread carnage around him.

I don't remember ever metal detecting that morning or whether my friend showed up, or even the cake and ice cream that surely came later with the four little partiers that were delighted daddy finally came home so they could eat it.

I have since learned that Dr. Miles' medicines were extremely popular and, therefore, this Blood Purifier was no Bryant's Stomach Bitters. But as you can tell, this bottle is still very special to me. I have turned 69 today, 38 years after I found Dr. Miles, more than half my life ago. It has been my fountain of youth this morning, taking me back and letting me relive a few moments of time when I was young and life was far more about possibilities than obstacles.

Flintstones Vitamins in the apothecary-style bottle. Photo courtesy of www.woodchoptreasures.com

Dr. Miles went into the medicine-making business in 1884 and became even more famous for his Nervine than his Blood Purifier and several other medicines he made. The Nervine promised to treat nervous conditions, including exhaustion, sleeplessness, epilepsy, neuralgia, hysteria, headaches, and more. Bromide was the ingredient it contained with sedative and anti-spasmodic properties. Advertisements were directed mainly towards women, suggesting that it could help them through the harrowing challenges of pregnancy, unruly children, hard-to-please husbands, and everything else that conspired against "the weaker sex." The Blood Purifier was the perfect complement to the calming Nervine, strengthening the blood and constitution, helping to rebuild the worn-out woman, like spinach did for Popeye.

The Dr. Miles' Medicine Company managed to shuck and jive its way past government regulation with its Nervine and blood medicine, and long after the death of its founder in 1929, it continued to produce new products that we know well today. Under the new name of Dr. Miles' Laboratories, it came out with Alka-Seltzer (1931), and then as simply Miles Laboratories, it introduced One-A-Day Vitamins (1940), Bactine, (1950), and Flintstones Vitamins (1968). An interesting sidenote about the two fabulously successful vitamin products is that they were both originally packaged in glass, apothecary-styled jars. I distinctly remember those old One-A-Day medicine bottles in our house when I was a kid as well as my mom spraying my owies with Bactine.

Miles Laboratories was purchased by Bayer Pharmaceuticals (the manufacturer of Bayer Aspirin) in 1979; then in 1995, Bayer retired the Miles brand name. Little did I know when I held up the bottle of Dr. Miles Restorative Blood Purifier to the sky on my birthday in 1986 that I was looking at the patriarch of what continued to be a long line of extremely popular products, some of which my own family had used, trusting, just like those who used the Nervine and Blood Purifier, that they would work.

Remember that today and tomorrow are always rooted in yesterday. My 31st and 69th birthday have been linked together by a patent medicine maker from long ago. A 19th century blood purifier and Flintstones Vitamins ... who would have ever dreamed...?

Lynn Massachusetts history - History of medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century medicine