Post-prohibition era white milk glass beer(?) bottle - help ID.

[Lbrewer42]

I got this at an insulator show Saturday. A couple of bottle people there and they said they had never seen one before. It is 10" tall and the base is 2 3/4" diameter.

On the shoulder is:
"

Federal Law Forbids


Sale or Reuse of


this Bottle"

On the bottom is as shown in the pictures. At first I thought it was from someplace abbreviated MASS. in Wisconsin since that is on the bottom. But there is no such town/city in that state. So now am guessing the MASS. is Massachusetts and the WI is part of some code since it is followed by a hyphen and a number.

Of course I would like to know if this is a scarce one, if it was a production run, or just a whimsey of some sort. Can anyone help?

 

[CanadianBottles]

It's definitely post-Prohibition, because the "Federal law prohibits..." message wasn't adopted until Prohibition was repealed. It's also not a beer bottle, because the statement was only used for products with a higher alcohol content than beer. I found a few other examples online through searching but none have labels, so it was definitely an established product. I highly suspect it was sake, although I can't find a perfect match for a sake bottle from that era. Sake did often come in milk glass bottles of that shape and size though.

 

[Lbrewer42]

Thank you for the education. I changed the title to post pro so more people won't have to educate me on this as well And thanks for the info on the sake. Off to do more searching online. I was searching for things like "opal glass liquor federal law forbids" (as well as using "white milk glass" with those terms). I just could find nothing.

 

[UnderMiner]

Never saw a crown top bottle made of milk glass, that's so cool!

 

[Lbrewer42]

My original intention was to send this info to an old and good friend of mine, David Whitten (glassbottlemarks.com), and then I got to thinking if I put the info here instead and sent him the link, then everyone could give input on this bottle. I got his reply this morning:
"

I have never seen that milk glass bottle before. However, there is info on the base that (luckily) shows who the glassmaker was!!!
Virtually all liquor bottles made in the US from 1935 to 1964 (and some in later years) were marked with the phrase "Federal Law Forbids Sale or Reuse of this Bottle" and ALSO all those bottles were required to bear a "Liquor bottle permit number" AND a date code somewhere on the base. Usually (not always) the LBPN is placed to the left and the date code is placed to the right. On the base of that bottle is "41-5". In the case of that bottle, the "magic number" is the 41 which was the liquor bottle permit number assigned by the US government to Hazel-Atlas Glass Company , in particular to their "plant A" in Washington, PA. (I am pretty sure the "5" is a date code for 1935).
Sorry for the "plug" but here is a page I put together not too long ago - with all the Liquor Bottle Permit Numbers I could find (from three different sources on the web).
https://glassbottlemarks.com/glass-industry-liquor-bottle-permit-numbers-numerical-list/

This makes sense about Hazel-Atlas because they are known to have made a LOT of milk glass - including lots of different kinds of salve/ointment/cold cream jars and also they made tons of those small glass "discs" or "Boyd liners" that fit into Mason jar zinc lids. "

A public and hearty thank you to David!

 

[CanadianBottles]

My original intention was to send this info to an old and good friend of mine, David Whitten (glassbottlemarks.com), and then I got to thinking if I put the info here instead and sent him the link, then everyone could give input on this bottle. I got his reply this morning:
"

A public and hearty thank you to David!

Huh that's interesting, I was expecting it to have been made overseas. It could be from a US-based sake manufacturer, because there were some in operation around that time, mostly concentrated in Hawaii from what little I could find online. Or it could be some other product, but I'm having trouble thinking of what else would have come in that type of bottle while also being alcoholic enough to need the Federal Law Prohibits marking. I typically assume that a crown top means they expected you to drink the whole thing in one go, but I guess that's not always the case since there are crown top quart ketchup bottles and I've sure never heard of anyone who would want to eat a whole quart of ketchup in one sitting.

 

[Old sodas]

Very interesting thanks for sharing!

 

[skimperscamp]

My original intention was to send this info to an old and good friend of mine, David Whitten (glassbottlemarks.com), and then I got to thinking if I put the info here instead and sent him the link, then everyone could give input on this bottle. I got his reply this morning:
"

A public and hearty thank you to David!

My original intention was to send this info to an old and good friend of mine, David Whitten (glassbottlemarks.com), and then I got to thinking if I put the info here instead and sent him the link, then everyone could give input on this bottle. I got his reply this morning:
"

A public and hearty thank you to David!

I do love a good mystery. Glassbottlemarks.com is an amazing research tool that I use often and and it is wonderful that you know someone there that can help so quickly. Another resource I sometimes use is https://sha.org/bottle/index.htm (I am not sure if the 2 sites are related or not).

 

[Lbrewer42]

Huh that's interesting, I was expecting it to have been made overseas. It could be from a US-based sake manufacturer, because there were some in operation around that time, mostly concentrated in Hawaii from what little I could find online. Or it could be some other product, but I'm having trouble thinking of what else would have come in that type of bottle while also being alcoholic enough to need the Federal Law Prohibits marking. I typically assume that a crown top means they expected you to drink the whole thing in one go, but I guess that's not always the case since there are crown top quart ketchup bottles and I've sure never heard of anyone who would want to eat a whole quart of ketchup in one sitting.

This brings up another thought to me. I posted n this forum a purple RRR bottle in my possession. I believe it to have been made at the Brookfield company when they were using up the materials they got from Baltimore Glass Manufacturing Company in 1897 when Brookfield took BGMCo to court for stealing their patent. The reason I suspect this is that the insulators made from the BGMCo sands almost all turned SCA, and my RRR bottle from same era is also SCA.
With that background, I know the boys getting the gob from the furnace were specifically told to make sure they had a gob ready to go at all times. The insulator makers were making thee insulators per minute. Therefore the boys would go to another furnace for a gob when all of the closer glory holes had someone else working there.
So the purple RRR bottle must have been from a boy going to the BGMCo glass batch and getting a gob rather than from the typical furnace holding the normal green glass that almost all RRR bottles are made from.
I am wondering if this milk glass bottle, and so far everyone I have contacted has said they never saw one before, was made in a similar fashion? Was the company making milk glass items the same day as a normal glass colored order of bottles was being made and one of the boys got a gob from the milk glass-containing furnace?
Just a weird thought and I am not sure something like that would get passed QC anyway. I would think not, but my purple RRR would have been clear when packed into a box at the plant vs. the typical aqua and likely would have stuck out like a sore thumb. Yet it got through.

Purple Radway link:

Added Purple Radway - seen one before?

Hi all - new to the forum. I have a number of bottles in my collection, and looking for info on the following. I know... its just a Radway, but a purple one? Its the only one I have seen and I like ut. Anyone else know what colors these come in?

www.antique-bottles.net

 

[Csa]

I think the top code is not P-233 but R-233 for Rectifier 233. There were distiller codes with a D- # and Rectifier codes. That meant they mixed the spirits with other ingredients. Very hard to find definitive lists of Distiller codes and especially rectifier codes. Cool bottle, and likely some kind of aperitif or after dinner drink.