Dump digging with my brother yesterday

[Plumbata]

My brother just got back from studying in Taiwan, and he wanted to do some digging. We hit the TOC dump and moved tons of ash and found lots of bottles, but the vast majority were slick and the good ones mostly broken. The temperature was of unsurpassed excellence though; temps in the 60s in late July are not common, and allow me to dig all day without much fatigue or sweating.

Found a rare Advance hutch from Peoria with a lip chip, an early applied hutch from the Pekin (illinois) Bottling Works with a gigantic lip chip, a nice 1/2 gallon jug, various Hires extract bottles, several local BIM crown sodas, assorted meds, and 2 glass eyeballs from a large doll's head. No new additions to the collection so I left feeling a bit disappointed, but it was still a great dig. I thought about it and realized that if it were a dig had in 2007 I would have gotten 7 new Peoria bottles and been ecstatic so I guess the subjective "quality" of a given dig is all relative. I planned where to sink the next hole and expect it to be both productive and informative so hopefully new collection bottles will be fount the next time out.

 

[myersdiggers1998]

Nice dig , is the square amber in the back a bitters?

 

[Plumbata]

Thanks Gordon, that was the first bottle of the dig, found by my brother. We were hoping for a bitters but it is just a Paine's Celery Compound. No intact bitters so far but I've seen Hostetters, Electric, and Harter's wild cherry bitters shards. Nothing special but hopefully there are some late-throw locals floating around in there. Of the 8 or so Peoria bitters bottles I only have 1; the most common, and even being the most common it is still a 350.00 piece. I'm not willing to spend that kind of money on bottles so crossing my fingers and hoping to dig them is the best option.

 

[tftfan]

Like the pics ! Can we have more? [] Thanks !

 

[mainer1]

Great looking batch of TOC bottles and artifacts
Looks like enough to have kept you busy all day

 

[privvydigger]

nice bunch, looks like there could be older ones there

 

[GACDIG]

Looks like another good dig to me Plum...

 

[Plumbata]

Thanks for the comments people!

Here are some pics of the clean stuff. Upon cleaning, the 1/2 gallon jug I found revealed itself to be very crude and interesting. In addition to the glaze, I am pretty certain that Iron filings were sprinkled on the jug prior to firing for added visual effect. I've never seen or heard of such a thing, so please let me know if you have any insights about it.

I like the older BIM Hires bottles.

The crazy jug. It is very crude looking and quite the eye-catcher. It is covered in "bumps" or bubbled-up clay, splotchy glaze, and what seems to be a uniform dusting of iron filings.

Close-ups of the jug, showing the strange dark grey splotches caused by what I believe to be the small bits of iron. At high temps Iron can/will oxidize into black Iron Oxide (Fe3O4) which I believe is what happened here.

Even closer. At this level of magnification, the nucleus of each splotch is clearly some sort of small metallic object. The usage of a scotch-brite and barkeeper's friend on the jug may have polished-up the metallic granules.

Thoughts on the jug would be most appreciated.


And here is another jug, a 1 gallon, from a recent dig here that cleaned up well and revealed some visually appealing glaze coloration. I've been craigslisting most of the jugs and stoneware I find but these brown jugs are very nice so I'm inclined to keep them. My gal also really likes the brown jugs so that's even more incentive to hold onto them. She may not be a collector but when she gets possessive about things like my 17th century Austrian Halberd, certain bottles and other antiques it makes me pretty happy. []

 

[cacarpetbagger]

Darn nice dig, hope ya find more soon.

 

[LC]

Love the one jug , color puts me in the mind of a Bennington marble , wonder if it might have been made by Bennington or they may not have made jugs at all .