Lynch & Clarke New York. Mt Vernon Glass Works.

[CazDigger]

Hi Steve, I will be talking to Howard Dean tomorrow at the Brewerton bottle show and will let you know what he says. I am trying to track down that article. Have you joined the Saratoga-type Mineral Water Bottle club? Don Tucker, who literally wrote the book on Saratogas, is the newsletter editor of the club and does a great job. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Saratogas.
Mike, I have a GII-15 in green just like that one, and it looks like a Mt Vernon shade of green, but one thing that makes me a little skeptical about the GII-15 is that they were most commonly made in amber and sometimes blue, two colors Neither Brian, who has a lot more experience than I, nor I have seen a single shard of at Mt Vernon..

 

[CazDigger]

As far as the New England Glassworks, I am going off of memory, but I am pretty sure thats where the invoice was from. (I remember being very surprised.) New England Glassworks did make a black glass base edge embossed bottle similar to the Ricketts Patent English bottles, not too far off style-wise from L&C mineral water bottles. Like I said previously, that does not exclude Vernon. There are at least seven mold and size variations, not to mention different colors of the L&C bottles, so it is possible that they were made at more than one glassworks.

 

[earlyglass]

I have seen quite a few of the GV-5 Railroads in that "rich amber" color... as a matter of fact I sold one to Rich Strunk. I don't know about the blue though...

 

[CazDigger]

The amber GV-5 are from Mt Pleasant. They made quite a few amber bottles, but no shards for GII-15 there either.

 

[earlyglass]

OK. Are all of the GV-5 examples from Mt. Pleasant? As you know, they come in aqua and a huge range of greens, including emerald and almost a blue-green. Are any of these attributed to MVG?

 

[wolffbp]

The amber ones are exclusive to MP as far as I know Mike. The others could have been made at either works.

 

[CazDigger]

I have only heard of one aqua GV-5 example that was in the Judge McKenzie collection. Surprising that aqua would be the rarest color for a flask.

 

[CazDigger]

Hi Steve, I spoke with Howard Dean and Jon Landers at the Brewerton show. Howard wrote the article you reference and Jon is the foremost expert on the Mt Vernon Glassworks. Both said they have never seen any documentation or shards that Lynch & Clarke bottles were made at Mt Vernon. I also contacted Don Tucker and he recalled the New England Glassworks invoice article but wasn't sure. I sent the National Bottle Museum an email asking if they could find the article, but I haven't heard back from them yet. Once again, I am not saying that L&C bottles weren't made at Vernon, but that no hard evidence has come to light. As far as I know, it is just speculation and it gets passed along like fact over and over. The best proof is a document. Even shards found at a glassworks can be misleading (could be cullet or a random throwaway from the period).

 

[Steve/sewell]

Thanks Mark,They are still the earliest or are the Congress bottles that Dyott advertised in 1809.

 

[CazDigger]

According to Don Tucker in his book "Collector's Guide to Saratoga- type Mineral Water Bottles,"
"Congress water was bottled and sold as early as 1810 in unmarked bottles. Advertisements appeared in newspapers over the next decade, including one in which Rev. D.O. Griswold was offering boxes of Congress Water in 1822 (Boston). It was not until Dr John Clarke purchased the land and spring that the commercial aspects of selling the waters were fully developed. After 1823, Congress water was sold in embossed bottles, marked Lynch & Clarke."
He has a date of 1823-1833 when the John Clarke embossed bottles appeared. Some of these were made at Vernon, Mt Pleasant near Saratoga and apparently other glassworks too. Don Tucker also states in his book that L&C bottles were made at Mt Vernon, but he has since told me that there is no hard evidence as of yet and he is currently researching where they were blown. If anyone is interested, you can buy his book directly, he lives in North Berwick Maine, but I don't have his phone #. If you have any interest in Saratoga type mineral water bottles, it is the "bible".