Dr. White's Eye Water Pontil

[nhpharm]

.

 

[baltbottles]

Brandon,

Where did you get these? I think my digging partner is the one who dug them.

Chris

 

[Lordbud]

These don't look American blown, nor British made. I'd throw a wild guess that they were made in Germany for export to the USA.

 

[nhpharm]

Chris,

I bought them in July of 2005 from an auction that was run on www.bottleauction.com.

Brandon

 

[GuntherHess]

I'm thinking German blown.

 

[RIBottleguy]

I saw that auction. Those bottles have a great story behind them. Definitely some of the earliest embossed medicine bottles!

 

[CHRISTHEHAWK]

I'm thinking Chinese blown or maybe Philippine blown.

 

[GuntherHess]

Philippine blown

[]did they ever really blow glass in the Philippines? I thought they drank out of coconuts?

 

[nhpharm]

Taylor,

Yep...if the timeline in the story is right, these should date to well before 1800...here is what the auction said:

It was 1974 in Alexandria VA where Glenn, Doug, and Joe (with the permission of the owner) were scouting out digging sites on a
property just 2 lots down from the Friendship Fire Company - organized in 1774 by George Washington.
The property proved very productive as they found several privy lines and 3 wells. They struck gold when the found Well #1, the oldest of
the 3 wells on the property.
Glenn recalls the discovery of Well #1 was a surprise; it was disguised as a privy. When the privy debris layers ended and the general
refuge dump began they realized the outhouse was placed on top of the dried up well pit. The Well casing measured out at 7’ X 7’ X
40’deep and that took over 2 months to excavate. The top surface layers dated from the 1920’s, bottoming out in late 1700’s. There were
layers over layers of broken Bitters, Pontiled Medicines, Black Glass, Flasks, Inks, Utilities, pieces of Geometrics, Mocha Ware Chamber
pot shards and a property address plaque that said “Alexandria DCâ€.
Glenn told me that most of the items found in Well #1 were broken with the well finally bottomed out at 40 feet deep to what Glenn felt to
be colonial artifacts.
Alexandria County was part of the original 100-mile square created as the District of Columbia in 1791 pursuant toArticle I, Section
8, paragraph 17, of the United States Constitution. The portion of the District created from territory ceded by Virginia in Fairfax County
was termed Alexandria County of the District of Columbia. The plaque was given to the property owner.
.
As usual the real prizes were at the bottom ant this was no exception; low and behold, at the very deepest point emerged 6 completely whole
examples of the same embossed pontiled Medicine Bottle! 3 were sapphire blue and embossed in English, and the other 3 were identical but
green and embossed in German/Austrian.
How convenient could it be? 3 wild and crazy digging buddies, with 6 perfect examples of 2 variants of the same bottle. Needless to say
each person got a matched set, one blue, and one green of these amazing examples of
“Dr. White’s Eye Waterâ€.
According to Glenn, Doug says he lost his set somewhere along the way, and Joe was a vagabond with a wonderlust and has not been herd
from in 20 years. So as of today, these 2 bottles are the only remaining of 6 examples known. The bottles and this digging story have been
hiding in Glenn’s private collection for the past 35 years.

By the way, enjoy the Ladd bottle! I picked it up originally because I thought it was a NH piece (there was a Ladd that was a pharmacist in NH) but when I got it home the initials were wrong, so a bit more research showed that it was a RI item.

 

[GuntherHess]

Cool story...but I've heard a lot of cool digging stories.[]

Would rather see an ad for the product.
There was something about a patent for it on a german website but I couldnt access it.