A Mysterious '5' -- who made it?

[5 gallon collector]

A 5-gallon water bottle, pics attached, made for the Crystal Springs Water Company, S. F. Cal. (San Francisco, I suppose) is marked with a simple '5' on the base. The spout suggests a date before 1930, so the '5' might indicate 1925 --- or might indicate the volume, 5 gallons (more likely, I think) ---- or something else. A few early California 5-gallon bottles are completely unmarked on their bases. Most bear a maker's mark - Illinois Pacific, or Owens- Illinois, McLaughlin or Latchford, etc. This is the first I have found with a very clean base and just a numeral - the '5'. Do any of you know which glass company, before about 1930, perhaps/likely in the Bay Area, used this form of marking?

 

[Hezezilla]

Whoa, first time seeing an embossed demijohn. This is super cool. Although not at all relating to your question, do you know about when these bottles were last made? These things are super common in Japan but no one can ever tell me who made them, when, or for what purpose. Sorry that I haven't any info for you.

 

[5 gallon collector]

Whoa, first time seeing an embossed demijohn. This is super cool. Although not at all relating to your question, do you know about when these bottles were last made? These things are super common in Japan but no one can ever tell me who made them, when, or for what purpose. Sorry that I haven't any info for you.

Hezezilla, Embossing on the 5-gallon water bottles was more the rule than the exception, though most or perhaps all of the bottle makers also made plain bottles, used with stuck-on labels. I suppose, since these water bottles were used over and over again, that embossing the water company pattern was in the long run cheaper than having to reattach a label after every return and cleaning. And I suppose that having embossed designs made the bottles look better. Also, it was a deterrent to theft, a water company not being able to use another company's design -- though some of the early early patterns are quite ornate, quite beautiful, and would have cried out to be stolen - as many doubtless were. Many of the bottles have on them, embossed, warnings about fines and even imprisonment if stolen. Most of the water companies switched to plastic in about 1979 +/- a year or few -- but there are a few that still bottle in glass -- eg Mountain Valley, in Arkansas. In the early years (1920s, 1930s) there were several bottle makers, but by the 1970s just very few -- Owens-Illinois, GPD (Arrowhead's Glass Products Division), and a few others, and many bottles were and are still coming form Mexico (eg CRISA), and from Italy. I don't actually know much about current glass bottle use, how many companies still use glass, nor who makes their bottles. I'd like to know more about the use of these bottles in Japan. Closest I have on Far East use is that there was a water company in Thailand, a front for a CIA agent, that used nicely embossed 5-gallon water bottles made in the USA by GPD. The Thai company was the North Star Company, whose water was bottled with the name Polaris. A Polaris image is attached, as well as four images that illustrate just how fancy the embossing could be!

 

[Hezezilla]

Incredible! I suppose we are actually somewhat talking about two different types of bottles. Demijohns (predominantly used for alcohol) and water dispenser bottles (which you have). I for one have never heard of of these 5gal water bottles. In Japan like elsewhere, demijohns were used to store/ferment alcohols. I would assume that Wine was stored in these as well as local spirits such as Saké or Shōchu.

Because of the abundance of abandoned properties and whole villages in Japan, many of these demijohns have survived to the present. It's possible that these were produced until rather recently but they are, for the most part either tooled top or applied top bottles blown in molds. So far, I cannot say for certainty that I've seen any made using a machine.

Japan did use old fashioned processes through to the 1950s so I would imagine that demijohns were being produced locally until that point. But, I'm not sure. The Japanese are not too keen on preserving or sharing history. As such I'm not super sure who, what, where, when, why, or how these bottles were used in Japan, simply that they DO exist in Japan and in an unusual abundance.

Photo: Japanese internet.

 

[5 gallon collector]

Very interesting. Ghost villages, full of bottles and likely other durable items - though in time perhaps only the bottles will remain, most everything else decaying, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. For these water bottles the term carboy is sometimes used, but it's a weird word, and can be properly applied to bottles of any large size, from 1 gallon upwards -- very nonspecific. They are most often advertised as '5-gallon bottles', or '5-gallon jugs'. It might be nice were there a unique term for them, applied only to the standard shape 5-gallon water bottle. (How about aquatote, or hydroflask, or something like that?) I actually don't know when the shape became standardized. I have thought that it perhaps came about when delivery by horse cart was replaced by delivery by truck. Trucks were able to carry much heavier loads = many more bottles, and so there had to be a way to stack them, more of them than there would be just sitting side by side in the bed of a horse cart.. The straight-side shape allowed placing the bottle in a rectangular wooden crate, and these crates, when all of standard size, could be stacked one on the other, and a truck might then carry 50, 60, 100 or more bottles. Each when filled with crate weighs about 55+ pounds, thus 5500+ pounds for a 100-bottle load, far more than a 1-horsepower! cart could pull, but possible with a motor. There must be some reference to this standardization in the literature, but I have not seen it.

 

[digger dun]

I found an embossed 5 gallon water jug on the side of the road in Texas years ago. Ozark Water Co. Actually have it for sale on facebook marketplace now...

 

[5 gallon collector]

I found an embossed 5 gallon water jug on the side of the road in Texas years ago. Ozark Water Co. Actually have it for sale on facebook marketplace now...

Digger dun, nice find. I wonder how it came to be roadside. I've never come across one discarded. Ozarka had plants all across the south. I'm interested in the western bottles, esp California, and the glass factories that made those bottles, and particularly the early years -- 19-teens to about the 50s. I do check facebookmarketplace, but my search seems to be limited to 500 miles from Los Angeles, which seems odd -- perhaps I'm doing something wrong.