New beer bottle closure discovered: Morgenstern

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Skoda

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Hi all,

One of the (few) highlights of last year for me was a bit of research I dove into on a bottle I had acquired several years back. It's a circa early 1870's era Valentine Loewer Lager Bier out of NYC with a fully intact and functional closure (sans the rubber being hard as a rock), despite the rust and pitting. When I first got it I identified it as a Kutscher closure and called it a day, but looking at it again I realized it was an absolute misidentification. There was nothing on the sodasandbeers database that quite matched mine, so off to google patents I went! I narrowed my search terms between the late 1865-1878 and went through every single "bottle stopper" patent I could find, and after about an hour digging through them, I believe I found it! It is assigned to H. Morgenstern and the patent drawings are near identical- the only difference being the lack of a hinge on the side of the bail without the clip. The date of the patent matches the era of the bottle AND it's inventor was out of NYC, so despite the slight difference I'm pretty confident this is a match. Morgenstern has a few other patents under his name but it appears that he died in the late 1870's as he's listed as "deceased" on an 1877 patent. The assignee on that one is H.W. Putnam (the H.W. Putnam), which is a pretty incredible connection. I'm going to be forwarding this info to the sodasandbeers site when I finally put a big email together, but I figured I'd share this here as well!
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bottles_inc

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Wow, fantastic find! As an NY collector I'm green with envy. That's top shelf material for sure. Where on earth did you find it? Is it one of those moonshot thrift store finds I always here about but never experience?
 

Skoda

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Wow, fantastic find! As an NY collector I'm green with envy. That's top shelf material for sure. Where on earth did you find it? Is it one of those moonshot thrift store finds I always here about but never experience?

It came up in a bottle lot at my old local auction house in Bristol NH. It was with like 10 various bottles and they were all low-end or worthless except for this one. Someone must have dug it up in NY and it ended up a few states over eventually.

Nice Bottle, Congrats. His Brewery lasted from 1871-1883 with that name & location. LEON.

Oh cool, I didn't know that! 12 years isn't a bad run at all
 

ROBBYBOBBY64

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Nice addition. I love odd closures. Many on this site also do. It looks like a variation of this type. The picture is slightly different than the patent. What do you all think? Great bottle.
ROBBYBOBBY64.
 

saratogadriver

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Nice addition. I love odd closures. Many on this site also do. It looks like a variation of this type. The picture is slightly different than the patent. What do you all think? Great bottle.
ROBBYBOBBY64.



I bet the loop on the hinge side was an improvement over the original patent with a solid piece on that side. Bet that solid piece wore out quickly and broke...

Jim G
 

ROBBYBOBBY64

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I bet the loop on the hinge side was an improvement over the original patent with a solid piece on that side. Bet that solid piece wore out quickly and broke...

Jim G
That's what i thought also. It is definitely the same idea but obviously an improvement. Looks like the solid design may have binded up when you open it. Not smooth, you know. Good observation Jim G.
ROBBYBOBBY64.
 

Skoda

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I bet the loop on the hinge side was an improvement over the original patent with a solid piece on that side. Bet that solid piece wore out quickly and broke...

Jim G
Yeah, that's what I was thinking as well. Definitely an improvement over having a single bent piece!
 

butchndad

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great bottle
very minor note: Morgenstern's attorneys for the patent application were Van Santvoord & Hauff, of Times Building, Park Row, New York
 

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