Blue pyro Perry Creamery Co.

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ACLbottles

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Just got this bottle and I was wanting some info on value, rarity, etc. I couldn't find anything on google or anywhere online. I found some bottles from the same company, but it was black pyro and a war milk. This one is blue pyro, has 3 stars embossed around the neck, and is one pint. It's from Tuscaloosa, Ala. The Owens-Illinois mark on the bottom is doesn't make much sense, because one number is upside down. If I'm reading it correctly, it has 18 on the left and a 4 for the date. That means it's 1934 or 1944. If it's 1934, that makes it an extremely old pyro milk. Thanks for any help with this bottle.
 

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SODAPOPBOB

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ACLbottles
Based on the following information, it appears the Perry Creamery was incorporated in 1922, which makes your bottle a possible candidate for being a 1934 acl. The 18 is the Owens-Illinois plant number for Columbus, Ohio.

The Owens-Illinois hardening process called Duraglas was introduced in 1940 and was also applied to milk bottles. By 1944 most Owens-Illinois / Duraglas bottles were marked as such. But because your bottle does not have Duraglas, it adds to the possibility of it being a 1934 acl.

More research should be done in order to confirm the 1934 date, but so far it's looking possible.

Perhaps there is a clue somewhere among the following ...

[URL=http://www.alabamacompaniesindex.com/perry-creamery-co-inc-at29/]http://www.alabamacompani...-creamery-co-inc-at29/
http://tavm.omeka.net/items/show/874
[URL=http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1817&dat=19471023&id=EyY_AAAAIBAJ&sjid=Wk0MAAAAIBAJ&pg=6512,1573473]http://news.google.com/ne...AJ&pg=6512,1573473
 

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SODAPOPBOB

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P.S. Because most of the Perry Creamery bottles found on the Internet are the war bond bottles like the one pictured below, those bottles were obviously manufactured between 1941 and 1945. Which leads me to believe that the 4 on your bottle is most likely for 1934 and not 1944. I am assuming that their 1944 bottles were like the one pictured here ...
 

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cowseatmaize

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I'll chime in however useless.First the 4 looks reworked to me in the picture which may explain it being upside down. Metal was a thing needed late in the war. I don't know what it was or means in this case.Second, about Duraglas. Since 18 closed in 1948, they may have known for a time and never converted the plant for that.Third is just my concern about war bottles. There a so many fakes around I don't trust them but don't know enough to tell them apart from the real thing. Or maybe it's the reassigned plant 4 Rockport NY, 1981. Just kidding, I don't think that. [:)]
 

SODAPOPBOB

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Another thing that might help would be to find a picture of the base on one of their war bond bottles and see how they are marked. If made between 1942 and 1945, the markings should tell us how they dealt with the numbers, and whether they used single digits or double digits. I have made a cursory search, and found lots of the war bottles, but no pictures of the bases, yet.
 

SODAPOPBOB

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[URL=http://www.sha.org/research/owens-Illinois_article.cfm]http://www.sha.org/resear...s-Illinois_article.cfm

At some point in 1940, someone in the Owens Illinois Glass Co. seems to have realized that a zero could indicate either 1930 or 1940, so a new code needed to be developed. The answer was to add a period indicating a manufacture of 1940 or later.

Bottles made in 1943-1946 may contain either single-digit numerals followed by periods or double digit markings, such as a 4. or 44 for 1944. In several cases, the initial 4 has been added as an afterthought, frequently slightly out of alignment with the other digits associated with the logo. Occasionally, a mold engraver forgot to change the code.
The company began integrating a two-digit system as early as 1943, but the 43 date code is rare.

By 1947, the change to double-digit date codes appears to have been completely adopted by all the plants.
 

SODAPOPBOB

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PS Here is a confirmed 1934 acl milk bottle ... so the process was not unheard of in 1934 Kolb's Dairy ~ Made by the Thatcher Glass Company ( If you wish, I can tell you more about this bottle later )
 

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ACLbottles

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Thanks for the help so far, guys. Bob, I was able to find a picture of the base of a Perry's war bottle from the 40's in an old ebay auction, and it looks absolutely nothing like the base of mine. It only has "Perry's" written largely across it.
$_12.JPG
 

epackage

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This writeup on pyroglaze is from http://dairyantiques.com/Introduction_to_Milk_Bottle.html, I have serious doubts about the date attiruted to the People's Milk being "pre 1930", I assume it's a typo which should read "pre 1940". The Golden Rule is the only bottle I found on their site which is dated 1934... Sodapopbob should find the article interesting when he gets to the part about coloring THE INSIDE of the bottles.... [<font]Beginning in 1933 a form of silk screening was introduced to put colored labels on milk bottles. The colored label was actually a mixture of lead, silica and borax fused to the glass at a temperature of 1200 degrees Fahrenheit for a period of four hours. Initially it cost slightly more for colored milk bottles compared to embossed ones. This was partially because the process was new and also because the dairy had already invested in the molds for the embossed milk bottles. However as the process was perfected and dairies wanted to update what was imprinted on the milk bottle, it became cheaper and faster to use colored label milk bottles rather than cutting the new molds needed for embossed milk bottles. It also made the labels much more prominent against the white background of the milk. Some dairies felt that these brightly colored milk bottles reduced the temptation of other dairies to steal and reuse their milk bottles. This was a serious problem with embossed milk bottles, resulting in added costs to
dairies. Some smaller dairies or even larger, less honest dairies would steal a competitor's milk bottle or even acquire milk bottles from a different locality and etch their name over the embossing or just use their milk cap. It was felt that with the colored milk bottles this type of bottle theft was just too obvious and not worth the risk.

This process was called pyroglazing (pyro for short) or Applied Color Lettering. Pyroglaze was the term used by the
Thatcher Manufacturing Company of Elmira, New York. Owens-Illinois Glass Company of Toledo, Ohio used the term Applied Color Lettering or ACL for the same process. The Universal Glass Products Company of Parkersburg, West Virginia called the process Fire-Fused Color Lettering or Hi-Fired Color Lettering. Liberty Glass Company of Sapulpa, Oklahoma used the term Lustro-Color for their bottles with colored lettering.

The first mention that we have seen of colored lettering by a U. S. glass manufacturer was a January 1933 newspaper article that said the Sheffield factory of the Knox Glass Bottle Company was experimenting with the process on prescription bottles. An industry press release in May of 1933 indicated that Owens-Illinois Glass
Company had developed this process for use on milk bottles at its plant in Huntington, West Virginia. Soon after, by July of 1933, they started promoting milk bottles with fused names and trademarks in color (they did not use the term
ACL at that time) in their own advertisements. In August of 1932 they used the term "Applied Color" Bottles in their advertisements to refer to display milk bottles that had color fused to the inside of the glass bottle. Display milk
bottles were internally colored white to simulate milk and a yellow color to indicate the cream. This was done inside the bottle and used by milk dealers in their promotional displays. One unintended use of these display milk bottles
was as a way to hide liquor. Prohibition was still in place in 1932 and these painted milk bottles did a good job of concealing their contents, especially if it was not milk. We are not sure if coloring the insides of the bottle was the
same technology as applying colored labels to the outside of the bottle but Owens-Illinois claimed that the colors were fused to the glass by intense heat. They said the color was an integral part of the glass and permanent and
indestructible except through breakage. The first advertisement we have seen from the Thatcher Manufacturing Company for pyroglazing was in March of 1934. They used the term pyroglaze in that advertisement.

[<font]With the advent of color labeling, slogans and advertising were often applied to other areas of the milk bottle that had been ignored in embossed bottles. Now some of the cost of new milk bottles could be considered as part of the dairy's advertising budget. Pyroglazing could be applied to the front and back of the bottle body, the shoulder (except 1/4 pint) and the neck of the milk bottle. It could also be combined with embossing. Some dairies continued to order their embossed milk bottles with the slug plate embossing on the front but added color labeling to the backside of the bottle. Another possibility was that the Owens-Illinois Pacific Coast Company offered to have dairies return their used embossed bottles and have color labeling added as a way to introduce the process to dairies. The bottle capacities, state seals, patent information, mold marks and maker's marks were generally always embossed and never pyroglazed. Pyroglazed milk bottles became very common by the 1940's. One estimate in 1941, was that over half of the new milk bottles manufactured had colored labels. However they did not totally replace embossed milk bottles. Some dairies preferred the embossed milk bottles so one cannot assume that embossed milk bottles will always be older than pyroglazed milk bottles. One downside of the color labeled milk bottles was that some chemicals used to wash the milk bottles could actually eat away at the labeling and cause it to fade or lose it's brightness. Over time wash system chemicals were modified to reduce this problem.

Around this time milk bottles were also getting lighter. A quart milk bottle prior to 1935 weighed 25 1/2 ounces.
As glass makers became more precise in the distribution of glass in the mold and reducing the number of flaws the total amount of glass could be reduced to save bottle and handling costs yet have a milk bottle of comparable strength. These light weight quart milk bottles weighed 3-4 ounces less than an older milk bottle. The word Duraglas (often in script) is found embossed on many pyroglazed milk bottle made by the Owens-Illinois Glass Company. Duraglas did not refer to the process of Applied Color Lettering. Rather it was the term used to describe the improved fabrication of glass bottles allowing the manufacture of stronger, lighter weight bottles by the company. In the
company's own words:

"Duraglas is the trade-mark name of glass containers and the new, improved technique which Owens-Illinois developed for their fabrication. This modern technique, covering every phase of manufacture from raw materials to finished bottles, makes possible a predictable result, assuring greater strength, durability and longer life.

[<font]Owens-Illinois Glass Company introduced the Duraglas name on September 4, 1940 (according to the trademark
application) although work on a lighter milk bottle probably occurred even before that, possibly as early as 1937. The Thatcher Manufacturing Company advertised a Lite-Wate milk bottle that weighed 22 ounces for a quart bottle
rather than the standard 25.5 ounces in March of 1938. These milk bottles had the same dimensions as the heavier milk bottles, just the distribution of glass as improved to allow a reduction in the total weight.

 

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SODAPOPBOB

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ACL: Great find. Maybe the war bottles were made by a different glass manufacturer than Owens-Illinois and they were marked on the heel and not the base. Perhaps you could take another look and see if you can find any heel pics and I will do the same. ~ * ~ Jim/epackage I have actually read that article in the past but it's been a while. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. And you're right, I especially like the part about coloring the inside of the bottles and how they were sometimes used to conceal booze during prohibition. ~ * ~ Of additional interest regarding early Applied Color Lettering bottles is this 1930 Owens-Illinois catalog. When I first stumbled onto it a couple of years ago I was skeptical about the date so I contacted the website manager where I found it, whose name is Arjun, and he checked the copyright page and in his reply assured me that the catalog was definitely from 1930. However, even though the 1930 catalog refers to "Applied Color," to my knowledge it was not actually initiated until around 1933 or 1934. When you couple this with various other clues, I believe there is a distinct possibility that the blue acl "Perry Creamery" bottle might very well be a 1934. 1st Picture ... [ Full Page From the 1930 Catalog Showing Various Examples of ACLs ]2nd Picture .. [ Cropped Text From Page ]
 

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