I have a rarity question about errors. POLL

[Staunton Dan]

I don't know if this is an error however, I don't understand why the word "BOULLION" would have been spelled backwards and upside down on this Maggi bottle. I have found other similar Maggi bottles without the word Boullion so I don't have anything for comparison. Has anyone ever found a bottle with this peculiarity?

 

[Staunton Dan]

Speaking of backwards, here is a block of metal I found yesterday that was used to print a neswpaper or magazine ad. It would of course be backwards so that it would print correctly. It shows someone pointing a rifle at a target that says "High Quality - Low Prices."

 

[bottlechaser62]

Hey Cowseat,
The error bottles are very cool and a few weeks ago...........I started a thread on error bottles.....not sure if you saw it or not. Its in this same forum so take a look at it if you havnt seen it- lots of wrongly made (or maybe on purpose who knows)............ There are alot of cool bottles shown.

 

[RED Matthews]

Neat coverage eveyone - I will have to get back to this later tonight. We have our local Tail Gators Bottle Club here at our house for our monthly meeting tonight. I am gradually getting a blog put together on bottle embossing, with pictures of my chisels, rifflers and layout systems for getting the desired embossing in the molds. These methods of getting the properly formed letters in the molds were really bad for almost a hundred years. i.e 1840 to 1950. The letters in the iron have to be in reverse of what you see on the glass.
Much like the printing plate illustrated. Back later. RED Matthews

 

[RED Matthews]

Well I am back. I have to say Staunton Dan that that reversed Boullion is something else. I think I need to point out that the mold maker was often just given a paper with the location of the lettering and the drawn letters. The mold maker had to then put some souluble thin maybe white paint in the cavity area. Then he would scribe a base line and might use a pencil to space the letters needed. He usually would also scribe a top line for the letter height. Next he would pick up his hammer and pick the right shaped chisels and looking at the original drawn letters in front of him, start to cut the letters in to the iron. The mental blocking problem came into play because the letters in the mold had to be cut in reverse layout, to be readable on the glass bottle. It was just a subconsccious error to make the N or S backwards, as he was seeing them, instead of in the necessary backwards direction. It was still happening in the 1960s but the problem usually happened that late, because the mold being made was a rush two or four molds to get samples for a new potential customer. They got the sample molds to make the glass and the salesman had to convince them that the whole sets would be made correctly. Good luck. I have here in my hands a pinched waste Coca Cola bottle that was a special two mold set of sample bottles. The bottom is marked:
"/ ALEXANDRIA " "/ L.A." in a circle form. The labled band has the script
"/ Coca Cola " with the "/ TRADE MARK REGISTERED " and under that
"/ MIN.CONTENTS 6 FL.OZS. " where the three underlined Ns were reversed.
The letters had to have been cut by hand. In this same time frame most jobs like this would have had the letters cut on a pantograph machine, form a cavity master on the machine. That happend on a lot of hand cut jobs, especially if the mold maker was daydreaming or hung over. We always left these hand jobs, to two guys that paid good attention to their jobs. As a foreman you knew who you could depend on.
RED Matthews

 

[Staunton Dan]

Thanks for the explanation Red. Did the bottle makers ever use something like is used for slug plated bottles. To get 1 or 2 letters backwards is understandable but to get a whole word like "Boullion" upside down and backwards makes me think that a slug plate was used and just accidently inverted. Here's another Maggi bottle without the word "Boullion" stamped on the shoulder. It has the word "Maggi" on the front and back shoulders.

 

[pontil_base]

Dan if im not mistaken i believe that to be a ad for the STEVENS GUN CO. I think i have a old ad that is 1890's with the same picture as your mold.Sure is a odd item to dig wtg!

 

[DJFALLS]

The sidewalks in Portland Oregon where I am from have the concrete workers names embossed in them along with the street name and the date they were put in. You wouldn't believe how many errors I see on them. I found one corner that has Hancock street on one side and Handcock on the other.

 

[Staunton Dan]

ORIGINAL: pontil_base

Dan if im not mistaken i believe that to be a ad for the STEVENS GUN CO. I think i have a old ad that is 1890's with the same picture as your mold.Sure is a odd item to dig wtg!

That is cool. Can you post a picture of the ad? Here is what it would have looked like reversed which is how it would have appeared after it was printed.

 

[GuntherHess]

I'm not sure all the people who cut embossing back then were literate, and even if they were, many werent literate in English. The 19th century was a big time of emmigration.
I would agree with Red, someone gave them a piece of paper with the text and they put it on the bottle best they could.
I think the importance of the embossing being corrrect wasnt all that high.
For most bottle of the 19th century the customers didnt even really look at the embossing.
The paper labels and boxes were what sold the products. The embossing I think was more to prevent competive re-use of the products and didnt need to be correct to serve that purpose. I think this is apparent by the amount of embossing errors seen.