blobbottlebob
Posts: 3661
Joined: 12/20/2005
From: Wisconsin
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Hey People. Here is a true story of one of my favorite underwater finds. I collect Hutchinson sodas. The rare ones are tough to acquire. Some bottles, as you all know, you just cannot buy. They are too rare to ever go up for sale - and if you're lucky enough to find one selling - you'd better be prepared to pay top dollar. This story relates the best way to get a dream bottle. That is, to find it yourself. Early on in the story, I make a Wizard of Oz - like reference to Tomahawks, Badgers, and Wolfs (like lions and tigers and bears). Those are all rare bottles from Wisconsin where I am out searching. I chose those three because not only are they rare but they sound similarly as dangerous as Lions, Tigers and Bears.
As always, I would appreciate any feedback you can give me. Please let me know what you think. Pictures to follow later. Thanks, Bob
Finding the bottle you just talked about.
(Or Finding a Hieztler). By Bob Libbey
How many times has it happened? You mention a bottle on the way out to a hunt and one turns up? Not as often as we’d like, but everyone seems to have at least one story like that.
On one such day, my brother Steve and I were planning a dive in a river. On the way out, we were talking about all the items that had been found there. I said that our buddy Jim had found an S.M. Eaton pre-hutch the last time he dove there. Steve replied that he already had that bottle. Except, he noted, that he did not have the mold variety that was manufactured by the glass company ‘MGCo’. Sure enough, that exact variant (from MGCo) winds up going home in his box.
However, we often talk about all kinds of great bottles in the excitement of going diving and we don’t actually find them. In retrospect, those conversations don’t stand out in your mind nearly as much. The truth is; if talking about finding a bottle actually helped you find it, we’d never shut up on the way out. All you’d hear is “Tomahawks, Badgers, and Wolfs, Oh my!” Or rather, “graphite pontilled acorn blob-top colored pre-hutchinson garbled nonsense”.
One of my dream bottles was a bottle from Hartford, Wisconsin. It was apparently a misprinted bottle from an early ill-fated venture by Theodore Dietzler. The bottle is a Hutchinson soda embossed ‘Trentel & Hietzler”. Little is known about Trentel but conjecture has it that ‘Hietzler’ must be a mis-printed ‘Dietzler’ because he went on to become a very successful bottler in Hartford. One reason that this bottle was a dream find for me is because I collect Hutchinson sodas and this one was extremely rare. Another is that my parents live right on the shoreline of Pike Lake. My grandparents lived there before them. Hartford is the nearest town. There is a sense of connection to the area and its’ history. Additionally, Pike Lake is where we first cut our teeth diving and where we first began to find antique sodas and beers.
Unlike the scenario discussed earlier, we didn’t just randomly talk about Hietzler before diving in Pike Lake. We talked about it every time. It became our pre-dive mantra. Right before submerging, we’d say, “Find a Hietzler”. I think it may have started as a taunt. “I’m going to find a Hietzler, beat that!” Later, it came to be general well wishing. It stood for, “Good Luck” or “Find the best bottle out there.” After awhile, we’d said it so many times it almost came to mean, “Giddy up” or “Let’s go get something.”
On one Sunday, Steve and I were deciding where to go diving. We had time for only one tank. I was lobbying for the biggest lake in the area. It is huge and there has to be glass at the bottom. Steve wanted Pike Lake. I said that there's nothing good left in Pike. We had already pulled out a lot of glass and the returns were diminishing. We ended up deciding to dive Pike Lake because we were going to visit our folks later in the day anyway. We took our parent’s pontoon boat out to dive in relative comfort. (You can get suited up in a standing position). When we started diving, we gave the usual mantra, “Find a Hietzler” and went under. As I hit the mud out there searching around, I banged up against a bottle. I grabbed it but I couldn’t investigate it very much. The mud I'd stirred up completely surrounded me. This forced me to feel the bottle for details that I couldn’t see.
This is one of the favorite topics of conversation for us divers. That is, “What did you think it was before you actually saw it?” We can jab about that for hours. You never forget your first impressions when you find something really good. When you’re diving, you can sometimes feel but not see a bottle. There’s really few life experiences to compare this to on land. Perhaps, a bottle digger might be able to relate if he or she were searching in the dark in a pit and finding bottles only by feel? As a diver, you’re underwater with limited or no visibility. Often you are sightless because of the sediment and particulate in the water. You’re feeling for clues as to a bottle’s identity, but you already have preconceived ideas about what you might find. Then, when you get something that doesn’t match those ideas, you wonder and guess until you actually view it.
I’m not sure what I expected that day. I guess a Theodore Dietzler and Company hutch (which is still rare but not nearly as rare) was not out of the question. We’d found that bottle before. As I felt around the bottle I had just found, I grabbed what seemed like an unusually plump blob top. That’s nice. Feeling down the bottle, I noticed that the shoulders started immediately. This thing had no neck. It had embossing, which I could feel by the outside texture on the bottle. That was good. It also seemed very short but the bottom was intact. It had to be an unusual Theo Dietzler hutch or my mind was playing tricks on me. It didn't feel right at all. It had no neck, the wrong blob, and it seemed way too short. I tried to look at it. There was too much mud. I held it right in front of my mask. Again, too much mud. I turned, twisted, and held it over my head. I still couldn’t see the embossing. I swam a bit to clear water, and finally re-held the bottle overhead. I immediately saw the “H”. I recognized it instantly. Oddly enough, the first thing I felt was guilt! Here I was complaining about how picked over Pike Lake was just a few minutes before. In fact, I think I said that there was nothing left to find here. Now, I had in my hands the best bottle that I had ever found in Pike Lake. It was a beautiful, nearly mint, extremely rare, Trentel and Hietzler Hartford hutch. Wow! This thing was sparkling with a deep rich teal aqua color! Even the metal stopper lodged in the neck and blob was intact without corrosion. Gradually, I recovered from my initial guilt. I grew to love that bottle as one of my absolute favorite finds for my own collection.
The bottle is also unusual in that it was manufactured by the Northern Glass Works company out of Milwaukee (embossed on the front hub). There was a chain of glass bottle manufacturing plants located in Milwaukee starting in the early 1880s with the Chase Valley Manufacturing Company. Northern Glass Works was several ownership changes into the future of that original glass venture. (Thanks to Peter Maas for documenting and sharing the history of Wisconsin glass manufacturing. Thanks Peter!). Hutchinson sodas from Northern Glass works are quite unusual. In fact, I believe that there is only one other known Hutchinson soda made by them. (The bottle is from the Ben Kornburger Company out of Milwaukee. While it is rare, it is from a large company located in a large town. That bottle is not even close to the rarity of the Trentel and Hietzler). One reason that Northern Glass Works had few Hutchinson sodas is that the glass company was short-lived. It lasted under that name for only a few years (between 1894 and 1896). (Later it became W. F. & S – William Franzen and Son – often seen on turn of the century bottles). Theodore Dietzler bottles begin to appear very shortly thereafter. There are known examples starting in 1898. (Thanks also to Roger Peters – author of Wisconsin Soda Water Bottles 1845-1910 (1996). Roger wrote the ultimate guide for Wisconsin soda collectors! Thanks Roger!).
The next spring, I took the bottle to the Milwaukee bottle show. People's reactions were funny. I showed it to Roger Peters who told me that it was the first whole one he had ever seen. I was shocked because the bottle is pictured in Roger’s book. Roger informed me that he had to use a broken example because no whole ones were then known. I showed it to Wayne Kroll (author of Badger Breweries Past and Present (1976). Wayne did not realize that metal stoppers can remain intact even when recovered from the bottom of a lake. Another author of Old Wisconsin Sodas (1996), Dan Gross, joked that the bottle was his when I handed it to him. He then asked precisely where I had found it. I did tell him that I found it scuba diving in Pike Lake. Other than that, though, I informed him that if I told him more, I'd have to kill him. He looked a bit surprised by that. Maybe that was too harsh. I should have given him the same pre-dive advice that I had, “Find a Hietzler”.
As a post note, I have learned more about the mold that this bottle was made in. My diving buddy Tom was lucky enough to find an extremely rare Hutchinson soda from a small town called Palmyra, Wisconsin. The bottle was manufactured by the Wisconsin Glass Company (a predecessor to the Northern Glass Works in that chain of Milwaukee glass manufacturers). Tom was kind enough to let me compare the bottles side by side. Both have the manufacturer’s markings on the front hub. The Trentel and Hietzler looks to have re-cut lettering at the base. By comparing the bottles side by side, I am certain that the bottles were blown in the identical mold. Thank you to Tom for letting me do that! It was sheer luck that allowed those two bottles to be paced side by side well over a hundred years post manufacture.
< Message edited by blobbottlebob -- 5/19/2009 2:23:43 PM >
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