Happy Anniversay

[SODAPOPBOB]

One of the coolest things about the ROOT 17 bottles is they were very likely molded by Earl Dean. I asked Jeff Dean (Earl's grandson) about this one time and he said he has no doubt that most of the first issue bottles were personally supervised by his grandfather and were most likely made by him and his crew.

 

[iggyworf]

Excellent! Thanx for the pics Bob. I have trouble taking good pics most of the time. It would still be nice to have a 1915 bottle even if it is not the Root 17, but now I know what to look for. Thanx again.

 

[SODAPOPBOB]

The original prototype is on display now in Daytona Beach. Here's the article: https://c1.liveauctioneer...n=20151117_AuctionNews

I'm reposting carling's link because if you read the article (dated today) you will notice that it appears the Root family is still taking the lion's share of credit for designing the Hobbleskirt. Even the Coca Cola Company now gives full credit to Earl R. Dean. So I'm surprised the Root family still takes this position when everybody and their brother now knows that Earl Dean designed the Hobbleskirt almost singlehandedly. Read "The Man Behind The Bottle" and you will see what I mean. The attached newspaper article about Earl Dean's death was published in 1972 and even it gives most of the credit to Dean as the designer of the Hobbleskirt. So I have to wonder why the Root family is backtracking now and trying to lead us to believe it was a family member who designed the first prototype and not Dean? The type of reporting on the link drives the Dean family crazy because they have been trying to set the record straight for years. Article (in three parts) from ... The Terre Haute Tribune ~ Terre Haute, Indiana ~ January 9, 1972 [attachment=Dean Earl R Death ...972 (357x1200).jpg] [attachment=Dean Earl R Death ...(2) (638x1200).jpg] [attachment=Dean Earl R Death ...(3) (1200x483).jpg]

 

[SODAPOPBOB]

Here's the copy/pasted paragraph from the link article that erks me the most. Notice that nowhere in the article does it mention Earl Dean's name. "Chapman J. Root designed the original bottle with help from two colleagues a century ago, on Nov. 16, 1915. His prototype bottle went on to win a national contest held by Coca-Cola in 1916 and helped generate a fortune for the family-owned Root Glass Co. in Terre Haute, Ind."

 

[SODAPOPBOB]

P.S. If you read Norman Dean's book you will see where Chapman J. Root had little or nothing to do with the actual design. His only real connection with it was that he owned the company. He had no clue what the bottle was intended to look like until Earl Dean showed him the sketch he had drawn.

 

[SODAPOPBOB]

By the way, did you know the prototype bottle the Coca Cola Company now owns was originally given to Chapman Root by Earl Dean? And then some years later, Chapman Root's son gave his bottle to the Coca Cola Company. They originally molded about a dozen bottles, ten of which were destroyed, leaving two bottles that Earl Dean put in his personal locker where they remained for several years until he gave one to Chapman Root. Its ironic that Root gave their prototype bottle to the Coca Cola Company and then in 2011 bought the only remaining example from the Dean family for $240,000,00

 

[SODAPOPBOB]

Both images are from Norman Dean's book that I was able to acquire through his son Jeff Dean [attachment=Dean, Norman L. Si...2012 (423x500).jpg] [attachment=Dean. Earl R. Retirement 1942.jpg]

 

[SODAPOPBOB]

I forgot to mention the live auction video was filmed by Jeff Dean and I believe it shows one of his two brothers and other family members when the camera swings left and shows a couple of ladies seated and a guy holding a camera. I believe the guy with the camera is one of Jeff's brothers, all three of which are Earl Dean's grandsons. Their father, Norman Dean, was not present at the auction.

 

[SODAPOPBOB]

This is the earliest publication I can find that mentions Coca Cola's new bottle. Notice where I underlined in red the word "corrugated." Imagine if it was nicknamed the corrugated bottle instead of the Hobbleskirt or Mae West. From ... The Washington Post ~ Washington, D.C. ~ April 27, 1917 [attachment=Coca Cola Prototyp...917 (684x1200).jpg]

 

[bottleopop]

I'm a collector of deco sodas. I have a couple of items of amusement related to this discussion. The story of the designing of the deco Coca Cola bottle by Earl R. Dean is an interesting one and I wanted to do just a bit more investigating online. As I imagine everyone here knows, the inspiration for the Coca Cola bottle was the cocoa pod, not the cola pod. Earl went to the library and looked in the Encyclopedia Britannica. So I wondered, why did he use the 'wrong' plant for his bottle design inspiration? Was it some sort of mistake? So, I looked, and you can too. The 11th edition of the Britannica is free and online. The 11th edition is dated 1910 and is likely the one that Earl looked in. I went directly to the 'right' plant, cola. There is no entry for it. I tried kola too, but there is no entry for that either. Earl needed an inspiration - he was on assignment from the Root company. Fortunately, just a few pages away from where a cola plant entry should be is the entry for cocoa. So I think it's pretty obvious that there was no mistaken identity on Earl's part; there was simply no entry for the cola plant at that time in the Encyclopedia. No doubt Earl looked at the drawing of the cocoa pod and thought: I can work with this! Even if Earl did find an illustration of the cola tree's pod in some other book at the library, he would not have used it. The cola pod is quite groady looking! No inspiration possible there. As a deco soda collector, the patent drawings for soda bottle designs interest me. Some bottles that have a patent date on them look just like the patent drawing. Some do not, however, and the 1915 Coke patent is an example. As far as I can tell, no one ever drank a Coke from a bottle with that design (unless the souvenir version had Coke in it). The design was re-done before production because it would not travel reliably on the conveyor belt. For whatever reason, a design patent that looked like the 1915 (and 1923) Coke bottle wasn't issued until 1923. The last item I have relates to the early history of deco soda crown cap bottle design patents. The first deco soda crown cap bottle design patent issued is of course the famous Coca Cola bottle design patent of 1915. However, arguably, the design patent used by the Gay-Ola bottle was actually first! The Coca Cola bottle's design patent was Filed on August 18, 1915. The design patent for the Gay-Ola bottle was Filed over a year earlier - on August 1, 1914 but it's design patent was issued on December 18, 1917. Why the U.S. Patent Office didn't issue the Gay-Ola bottle's design patent first is a mystery within the Patent Office, I suppose. A design with a few rings is not nearly as exciting as the Coke bottle's famous shape but anyway, the rings design constitutes an "ornamental design for a bottle". (There are other ornamental design bottle patents issued before these, but they are not crown cap bottle designs.)