Steve/sewell
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Having met Rick, recently showed me how enthused the man is about bottle digging.It is not an obsession but a passion he literally lives for digging bottles. It is easy to tell what the most important recent event in his life is and it was digging his puce colored mid 1800s Eagle flask.
When Rick arrived with his flask at the gate to the Kensington glass factory,the flask was wrapped more times and tighter then King Tutankhamen's derriere .His bottle could have survived a direct impact with a particle accelerator I am not kidding.[
]It was really neat to see that flask in person and I can understand just how proud he is to have found it.
T W Dyott's historical flasks made at his Kensington Glass Works for all intensive purposes are usually light greenish aqua to just plain aqua in color. This is pretty much true for all of the Historical flasks that Mckearin's charted that were attributed to Dr.T W Dyott and later at the Dyottville works even after Dyott lost the works first to his son and then to Benners , Smith and Campbell. I was very fortunate to have picked up this very historic, quite rare and very nominally priced T W Dyott Masonic/Eagle flask on eBay and it arrived yesterday.
This flask was charted by the Mckearin's in their book American Bottles and Flasks and their ancestry as the GIV-37 Masonic/Eagle.There is a very detailed Masonic motif on one side and on the other is the famous American Eagle with the initials T W D in an oval frame below it.The known colors listed for this flask were the very common Aquamarine,a pale green with translucent milky white striations and a very pale yellow.
This particular flask is a very pale Topaz yellow with hints of clear and very light amber. There is a long very narrow bubble in the neck area which has a bright orange residue in it and a piece of the bottom of the flask just below the initials T W D is missing as though it was pared off. There is additional spidering in the glass in the neck area off of the bubble but the neck itself is very solid. There is no further damage and the flask really has no high point wear or interior staining.
This flask although extremely rare in this color will never compare to Ricks flask in all aspects.His flask is damage free, and is a very bright puce in color. It has good age to it 1850 to 1860 and was made at the famous Dyottville glass works owned at the time by Benners Smith and Campbell. Mckearin charted this bottle I believe as the GII-38 Eagle Pint sized flask.
My flask is older in fact it was the first one mentioned by Dyott in 1821 advertisements in Newspapers.It was made anywhere between the years 1821 and 1825 at the same factory location as Ricks flask but it was called the Kensington Glass Works in that era. The color is quite unique and was listed as a color found by the team of glass historians that George and Helen Mckearin assembled to chart the historic flasks. You don't see this color to often in fact I have never seen the Dyott Masonic flasks in colors other then Aqua and pale greens
My flask was purchased ,Ricks was dug by the sweat of his brow. All the money in the world cant buy the joy that flask has brought to Ricks life. Although I am quite content with my flask its not the same as digging one. After visiting Dyottville and now adding this bottle to my collection, I feel very appreciative of the fact I was able to see first hand, touch and and walk on the very grounds this flask was made on. I know Rick and Dave the Badger were also quite moved by the experience.
I have pictured the flask along side of an aqua example in my collection to show the difference in color between the two. It is a very nice sunny day out today.
When Rick arrived with his flask at the gate to the Kensington glass factory,the flask was wrapped more times and tighter then King Tutankhamen's derriere .His bottle could have survived a direct impact with a particle accelerator I am not kidding.[
]It was really neat to see that flask in person and I can understand just how proud he is to have found it.T W Dyott's historical flasks made at his Kensington Glass Works for all intensive purposes are usually light greenish aqua to just plain aqua in color. This is pretty much true for all of the Historical flasks that Mckearin's charted that were attributed to Dr.T W Dyott and later at the Dyottville works even after Dyott lost the works first to his son and then to Benners , Smith and Campbell. I was very fortunate to have picked up this very historic, quite rare and very nominally priced T W Dyott Masonic/Eagle flask on eBay and it arrived yesterday.
This flask was charted by the Mckearin's in their book American Bottles and Flasks and their ancestry as the GIV-37 Masonic/Eagle.There is a very detailed Masonic motif on one side and on the other is the famous American Eagle with the initials T W D in an oval frame below it.The known colors listed for this flask were the very common Aquamarine,a pale green with translucent milky white striations and a very pale yellow.
This particular flask is a very pale Topaz yellow with hints of clear and very light amber. There is a long very narrow bubble in the neck area which has a bright orange residue in it and a piece of the bottom of the flask just below the initials T W D is missing as though it was pared off. There is additional spidering in the glass in the neck area off of the bubble but the neck itself is very solid. There is no further damage and the flask really has no high point wear or interior staining.
This flask although extremely rare in this color will never compare to Ricks flask in all aspects.His flask is damage free, and is a very bright puce in color. It has good age to it 1850 to 1860 and was made at the famous Dyottville glass works owned at the time by Benners Smith and Campbell. Mckearin charted this bottle I believe as the GII-38 Eagle Pint sized flask.
My flask is older in fact it was the first one mentioned by Dyott in 1821 advertisements in Newspapers.It was made anywhere between the years 1821 and 1825 at the same factory location as Ricks flask but it was called the Kensington Glass Works in that era. The color is quite unique and was listed as a color found by the team of glass historians that George and Helen Mckearin assembled to chart the historic flasks. You don't see this color to often in fact I have never seen the Dyott Masonic flasks in colors other then Aqua and pale greens
My flask was purchased ,Ricks was dug by the sweat of his brow. All the money in the world cant buy the joy that flask has brought to Ricks life. Although I am quite content with my flask its not the same as digging one. After visiting Dyottville and now adding this bottle to my collection, I feel very appreciative of the fact I was able to see first hand, touch and and walk on the very grounds this flask was made on. I know Rick and Dave the Badger were also quite moved by the experience.
I have pictured the flask along side of an aqua example in my collection to show the difference in color between the two. It is a very nice sunny day out today.
