Steve/sewell
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I picked up this bottle recently and I am very pleased at how it cleaned up.
This variant of the bottle is the oldest between 1824 and 1825.
The color is very pale green,it has lots of whittle and has a very crude uneven folded lip.
The bottle has a deep rough pontil and looks to be made similar to the Booz bottle
with the diaginal verticle mold seem running catty corner on two sides.
If I were to guess the time and place of this bottles manufacture only three glass houses were
operating located conviently to Philadelphia in the early 1800s.
They were Glassboro,Clementon or Port Elizabeth all in Southern New Jersey.
The color of the bottle is dead on with other glass attributed to these glass houses.
This particular bottle is the first mold and is shaped somewhat like a tombstone.
There are two variants I am awhere of Swaims first bottles.The first is rectangular in shape
and is curved at the top on all sides like a tomb stone.The second mold which came out
a couple of years later looked nearly identicle to the first but was straight across at the shoulders of
the bottle.All other parts of the bottle including the embossing are nearly the same but the
apostrophe in SWAIM'S is smaller on the first version.In 1829 Swaim switched to the cylinder shaped
bottle to protect his product from piracy.
Here is a brief history of Swaims beginnings.
When a New york City bookbinder named William Swaim was afflicted with some illness,he
consulted a physician who prescribed a remedy that restored Swaims health.
Swaim attained the formula and moved to Philadelphia to launch a career as a patent
medicine vendor.His concoction that was first marketed in 1820 was called Swaims Panacea
for the cure of scrofula or the Kings evil and Swaim chose the symbol of Hercules slaying the
many headed dragon to advertise his panacea that lived on for more then a century.By 1825
Swaim was packaging his panacea in rectangular shaped green and aqua colored glass bottles
lettered on three sides Genuine, Swaims Panacea,Philadelphia.In 1829 he switched the bottle
to a green cylindrical shaped lettered Swaims ,Panacea ,Philadelphia on three seperate vertically
indented sides.
I will also show in this post a bottle sold by our friend from the forum Kungfufighter (Jeff )
of one of the most informative and having some of the rarest glass and being one of the
top web sites on the internet for early glass. www.jeffnholantiquebottles.com
There bottle is the same bottle as mine but deffinatly aqua in color.
The picture of the straight shouldered version of this same rectangular shaped bottle is brought to
you by Ed and Cathy Gray of http://www.greatantiquebottles.com/ another super informative
gerat glass web site.The top of the bottle pictured on their web site has the straight horizontal lines
at the top of the bottle
Anyone wishing to add any information to this post would be welcome as I am a novice on Swaims bottles
but have really fallen head over heels for them.I
This variant of the bottle is the oldest between 1824 and 1825.
The color is very pale green,it has lots of whittle and has a very crude uneven folded lip.
The bottle has a deep rough pontil and looks to be made similar to the Booz bottle
with the diaginal verticle mold seem running catty corner on two sides.
If I were to guess the time and place of this bottles manufacture only three glass houses were
operating located conviently to Philadelphia in the early 1800s.
They were Glassboro,Clementon or Port Elizabeth all in Southern New Jersey.
The color of the bottle is dead on with other glass attributed to these glass houses.
This particular bottle is the first mold and is shaped somewhat like a tombstone.
There are two variants I am awhere of Swaims first bottles.The first is rectangular in shape
and is curved at the top on all sides like a tomb stone.The second mold which came out
a couple of years later looked nearly identicle to the first but was straight across at the shoulders of
the bottle.All other parts of the bottle including the embossing are nearly the same but the
apostrophe in SWAIM'S is smaller on the first version.In 1829 Swaim switched to the cylinder shaped
bottle to protect his product from piracy.
Here is a brief history of Swaims beginnings.
When a New york City bookbinder named William Swaim was afflicted with some illness,he
consulted a physician who prescribed a remedy that restored Swaims health.
Swaim attained the formula and moved to Philadelphia to launch a career as a patent
medicine vendor.His concoction that was first marketed in 1820 was called Swaims Panacea
for the cure of scrofula or the Kings evil and Swaim chose the symbol of Hercules slaying the
many headed dragon to advertise his panacea that lived on for more then a century.By 1825
Swaim was packaging his panacea in rectangular shaped green and aqua colored glass bottles
lettered on three sides Genuine, Swaims Panacea,Philadelphia.In 1829 he switched the bottle
to a green cylindrical shaped lettered Swaims ,Panacea ,Philadelphia on three seperate vertically
indented sides.
I will also show in this post a bottle sold by our friend from the forum Kungfufighter (Jeff )
of one of the most informative and having some of the rarest glass and being one of the
top web sites on the internet for early glass. www.jeffnholantiquebottles.com
There bottle is the same bottle as mine but deffinatly aqua in color.
The picture of the straight shouldered version of this same rectangular shaped bottle is brought to
you by Ed and Cathy Gray of http://www.greatantiquebottles.com/ another super informative
gerat glass web site.The top of the bottle pictured on their web site has the straight horizontal lines
at the top of the bottle
Anyone wishing to add any information to this post would be welcome as I am a novice on Swaims bottles
but have really fallen head over heels for them.I
