Anyone here have some iridescent Benicia Mud Flats bottles?

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cyberdigger

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It's always so humbling coming on here.. my clean bottles aren't clean enough, and my sick ones aren't sick enough...[&o]
 

surfaceone

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ORIGINAL: cyberdigger

It's always so humbling coming on here.. my clean bottles aren't clean enough, and my sick ones aren't sick enough...[&o]

Truer words, sir...

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Dabeel

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Hey Stephen,

Thanks for the compliments.
To answer your question, the dumpsite finds are from one of the outlying dumps south of Downtown SF. You can't really dig these by hand as the dump has been filled over 15'-20'.

What we did is go through the piles left by an excavator that was digging a deep pipeline that crossed through a midsection of the original dump. All the excavated piles had tons of rusted metal, bricks, and shoes within the normal range of San Franciscan soil such as silty sand with rocks. We didn't encounter much of what's known as Bay Mud....the smelly decomposed grey clay with shells. Every single bottle found had the irridescense (spelling?) that you like.

Let us know if find synthetic ways of recreating that process. I like this post you started!

Doug(Dabeel)
 

surfaceone

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Hello Doug,

Your friend has quite a shelf of dazzlers there! Do you know if the device in the left foreground is a "duster," along the lines of this:
mummy-duster.gif
?

I was surprised to note that Benicia was the sixth Capitol of California.
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benicia.jpg
A partial view of the mudflats, from here.

I love opalescent glass. Thanks for putting up these beauties.

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CALDIGR2

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I have dug on the Benicia flats on and off, mostly off, since the late 1960s. I have been there once in the last 5 yrs. At one point I had a lot of different bottles that we pulled from the mud behind the tannery. The tannin from that facility made the most beautiful iridescence I have ever seen. One of my old diggin' buds has quite an extensive collection of them that our club displayed at the 2006 Reno National.
 

surfaceone

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One of my old diggin' buds has quite an extensive collection of them that our club displayed at the 2006 Reno National.

Hey Mike,

Now, there's a picture I'd love to see. Any chance yer bud, or one of the 49ers, could send you a photo to put up?

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KentOhio

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Here's my best one:


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Lordbud

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Hey there's one of these J.J. Macks on the left side of your friends shelf o' sickness. [8D] Sick glass with some Benicia effect...hard to capture just right with a digital camera.

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Mr Kitty

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Benica Mud Flats pickle bottle

i have been searching for images of the famed benicia, ca bottles online for a while but have had little luck. I have seen a few in books or at shows but that was years ago and it would be awesome to refresh the ole' memory if some of you are willing to post pictures of the iridescent bottles you own or have access to.

After reading ribottleguy's post on bottles that shouldn't be cleaned it reminded me of an exquisite lea & perrins sauce bottle that looked like the benicia mud flats material, that is, before my father accidentally broke it when i was about 11. It was the most beautiful bottle i have ever owned; absolutely saturated with the most complex interwoven spectrum of greens, purples, yellows, reds and blues i've had the pleasure of handling. It looked like a gem opal on crystal meth. I got it for a buck a short while before, and after it got knocked off my shelf i am pretty sure i shed a few silent tears. [:(] dad said he would replace it, but alas, a similar piece has eluded us. I still have the shards, actually, but lord knows where they are.

Anyway, post your iridescent bottles, or if there is a similar thread please link me. Myself and many others would probably appreciate it quite a bit!
This 11 inch Smith pickle was found at the Benica mud flats around 1960
 

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Ken_Riser

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This 11 inch Smith pickle was found at the Benica mud flats around 1960
Never see one those kinda different aren't they liquor or what they put in them look kinda religious liquor wow kinda wierd looking hard tell what they put in them of you didn't already know look churchy kinda to

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