Hobbleskirt Coke with 1916 date error

[SODAPOPBOB]

Is the nuked eBay bottle current or from an older listing?

 

[Dmellman]

FullSizeRender-10.jpgIMG_5803.JPG

 

[Dmellman]

Notice how in both bottles the letters match up exactly on the same position with the segments below. Notice how each relative position of the top line and bottom line letters are the same. Notice how the script lines up with the top line the same.

 

[Dmellman]

the bottles are current, just search for Chattenooga 1915 Coke bottle

 

[SODAPOPBOB]

Making progress ... Does your error bottle have the so called "Peg-leg G" with a little tail on the end?

 

[Dmellman]

The appears to be a peg leg g in registered

 

[Dmellman]

I have some Chattanooga straight sides and the G is the same on them too.

 

[Dmellman]

I believe that there is little doubt now that this bottle is a CHATT bottle, I will speculate earlier than the early twenties e-bay examples, given lack of location on base, perhaps this was the first attempt at hobble skirts for whatever plant made it. That still leaves the other type. I can understand one mistake, but two different molds with a mistake from the same place? Hard to accept. Unless it wasn't a mistake.

 

[SODAPOPBOB]

They will probably ship me off to the funny farm after this one - but that's okay, I'll take the risk. Anyway, I have been reading up on the history of the Chattanooga Glass Company hoping to find something that might explain why they marked certain bottles, such as early, straight-sided Coca Cola bottles, but didn't mark some of their later bottles? The attached snippet is from Julian Toulouse's 1971-72 book "Bottle Makers And Their Marks" which I have a copy of that I scanned the image from. Notice where it says ... 1. "By 1912 there were three tanks with 12 rings." Also notice where it says ... 2. "The company's first of several ventures in buying other companies came in 1917 with the acquisition of the closed Tallapoosa (Ga.) Glass Co., founded in 1908, which had one tank and six rings. Chattanooga operated it until 1920 and liquidated it in 1926." Now here's the funny farm part! I wonder if the 1916 error bottles were made at the Tallapoosa plant and they used the number 4 as a code for that plant because it would have constituted Chattanooga's fourth tank? Which might explain why the error bottles don't have the CHATT mark.

 

[SODAPOPBOB]

To clarify ... "Tanks" are where the glass was melted and held until fed to the bottle mold machines. Maybe Chattanooga Glass wanted to keep track of which tank and/or "batch" of molten glass the new Coca Cola bottles came from. Thus, a 4 for tank/batch number four.