Wheelah23
Well-Known Member
I acquired a couple mint George Greason bottles from Montclair a while back, but recently became interested in the crown cap that came with one of them. A blob version that was with it has the original Putnam closure on it. They date from 1899 (when Greason started business) to around 1910.
The cap in question is, I believe, an unusual find in and of itself. It's not often that an original TOC crown cap survives to the present day, due to the fact that they weren't made to stay with the bottle. But this cap, I think, gives a good idea of how much the technology has changed. The cap looks completely different from anything today. I can't find the exact patent for it though. It looks more like a knockoff of Painter's patent than an actual patent for the Crown Cork & Seal Co. Here's the closest "official" patent I can find. Mine's different though. It has a hole in the center of the metal part where the cork goes, and has a few metal "teeth" in the center to hold the cork in place. It's hard to explain, but the pictures show it.
A hint may come in the cap itself. It's very corroded, but the outside would've had embossing. Since the outside is so corroded, I can't read that. Instead, I can read the imprint of the embossing that's under the cap. By putting it in a mirror (the pictures I'm posting are of the mirror so that you can see the letters properly), I can read the word "PATENT" on one side. The other side is a little tougher, since the corrosion covers some of the letters, but what I can read says "BERTS". I assume this is part of the name of the inventor, and could be the key to finding the patent.
So a question I have is, does anybody have any similarly old caps? What's the oldest you've got? And more importantly, how can I restore this cap? Is it too corroded to help? If not, what can I do (vinegar, electrolysis, etc.)?
The top:
The cap in question is, I believe, an unusual find in and of itself. It's not often that an original TOC crown cap survives to the present day, due to the fact that they weren't made to stay with the bottle. But this cap, I think, gives a good idea of how much the technology has changed. The cap looks completely different from anything today. I can't find the exact patent for it though. It looks more like a knockoff of Painter's patent than an actual patent for the Crown Cork & Seal Co. Here's the closest "official" patent I can find. Mine's different though. It has a hole in the center of the metal part where the cork goes, and has a few metal "teeth" in the center to hold the cork in place. It's hard to explain, but the pictures show it.
A hint may come in the cap itself. It's very corroded, but the outside would've had embossing. Since the outside is so corroded, I can't read that. Instead, I can read the imprint of the embossing that's under the cap. By putting it in a mirror (the pictures I'm posting are of the mirror so that you can see the letters properly), I can read the word "PATENT" on one side. The other side is a little tougher, since the corrosion covers some of the letters, but what I can read says "BERTS". I assume this is part of the name of the inventor, and could be the key to finding the patent.
So a question I have is, does anybody have any similarly old caps? What's the oldest you've got? And more importantly, how can I restore this cap? Is it too corroded to help? If not, what can I do (vinegar, electrolysis, etc.)?
The top:
