sscokebottles
Well-Known Member
This bottle is really stumping me. I recently found this bottle at an antique shop, and I'm not sure if it's the real deal or not, I included some crappy cell phone pictures, and hopefully a good description will give you a good idea of the bottle. Alright, so it looks to be hand blown, just from the general crudeness, base, and various impurities. It looks like it has a crude (very uneven if might add) applied top, and the mold line stops just before the lip. It reads on the front "S T / Drake's / 1860 / Plantation / X / Bitters" on the three tier roof top. On the back on the second tier it has "Patented / 1860" all on the same tier of roof. This is the part that has me concerned, on the examples I've seen, usually the date "1860" is the lower tier, interrupting the roof pattern. The other concern I have is that the glass seems to light or thin. Its still a heavy bottle, but not heavy enough to feel like an 1870's bottle. And the last concern is that has two open areas, I forgot if there was supposed to be two or one on these bottles. But other then that, the base looks right compared to other drake bottles, the embossing quality is fair, has 6 logs above where the label goes on both sides, and 17 logs on the other areas (including base) and it has a nice honey amber color to it. Now, I know it's not a thousand dollar bottle, maybe it's a 75-100 dollar bottle even of its real. But it would be a nice addition to my collection because I dont have a log cabin bitters yet. Anyway, if it turns out to be repro, I didn't loose much, but if it turns out real, I scored. I actually found it amongst a lot of Avon and Reproduction bottles, but this one had an applied top and looked hand blown, so it stood out to me. Below are the pictures (hopefully not oversized this time), I wish for the best... Have a nice week everybody!