Price's Patent Candle Co.

[cowseatmaize]

OK, I just bought a steak which I'll probably need after this comment but if I get a black eye and put the steak on it is it then a medicinal steak?
All fun aside, lots of products had more than one use. This is where we get most of our ideas from. Almost all have been from seeing one thing and using for another.
Cotton is used for clothing and bandages. Mix booze with honey and it's cough syrup. Sell them seperate and ones a drug and the other is food. Turpentine is a muscle rub and a wood cleaner etc.

I think the question remains at what did the maker intend it for? I still have to vote for household. I'm not saying I'm right or your wrong, there's a lot of grey in this world but that's my opinion.

Well, off to shovel some more. Have a great day.

 

[grimdigger1]

There are some labeled ones in collections in the Uk will try and find a pic of one ..
They have always been collected as cures in the UK ,,but this may be wong ??? one to ponder [sm=rolleyes.gif][sm=rolleyes.gif]

 

[bottleboy311]

My vote is for a household or manufacturing item. I don't think glycerine was in these bottles they are much too large. Yes glycerine was used for medicinal purposes and may have been sold in large amounts for that purpose. But Prices's was not in the medicine business. They were making and selling consumer products, soaps, candles etc. Glycerine may just have been another product to make and sell that would compliment their other products.

Glycerine has been and continues to be used for many industrial and non-medicinal purposes. It is used as a lubricant, a cleaning agent,it is an additive in certain type of inks, it is used as an additive to soften and rejevenate products like rubber and certain types of plastics, and it is used as a release agent for lining in molds. All of these purposes, would require only a small amount. I use to use glycerine in the making of rubber products and never bought or saw a bottle of glycerine over 2 ounces.

Price's Patented Candle Co. made soap products and glycerine may have been an additive for their soaps. Also it could have been used in a the candle making process to line the molds so the wax would not stick to the metal. However, for either of these purposes, I don't think it would have been sold in a bottle as large as the Price's. Prices's Patened bottles are probably 10 to 12 ounces at least. Most likely, these bottles held the wax, soap or paraffin. That amount of glycerine, 10 to 12 ounces, would have been over kill for the consumer making candles or soap. If glycerine was used as a release agent, or an aditive, one or two ounces would last for at least 6 to 10, 12 ounce bottles of wax.


Lee

[sm=lol.gif]Oh and by the way Ron, if sherry wine is medicinal, I am going to have my Doctor write me and my wife some Rx's. I could use the medical write-off on my taxes next year.

 

[deepbluedigger]

The glycerine was largely a by-product of the production process for candle manufacture. When Prices started out in 1830 the glycerine was mostly dumped into the river Thames (the factory was alongside the river) as a waste product, but a wide market was found for the stuff starting in about the 1850s (the diamond shaped embossing on the bottle is a British registered design symbol, the coded letters and numbers dating the design to December 1853 - this is the earliest possible date for these bottes, but they still had the diamond embossed into the 1880s or 1890s).
The glycerince was used for medicinal purposes, and was certainly in many cases, although probably not all, sold as such, at least in Britain. It was used externally as a skin treatment, especially for burns, and was used internally to aid digestion.
The pontiled examples would date to about 1854 - 1865.
The known colours in the UK are various shades of blue, aqua (much less common than the blue) and amber (only one known - it was dug in good condition way back in the 1970s, and then was accidentally broken about 20 years later!!). A real lime green one with a pontil, as mentioned above, would be a mega-rare bottle.
There are also very rare double - capacity examples in blue. Roughly quart size.
Another rare variation in blue is embossed 'Prices Soap Company Limited', but is otherwise about identical to the candle Co bottles.
DBD

 

[deepbluedigger]

Forgot to mention - the bottle was used for glycerine. There are a number of examples with original labels in various collections over here in Britain. This is a pic re-photographed from a magazine (ABC-UK, #14), of a candle co bottle with label.

DBD

 

[deepbluedigger]

Try again - maybe it will work this time......

 

[Bluegrass]

We're still going on this! The one I dug had the paraffin-wax solution still in it and dated to 1870. The contents were used for burning in oil lamps. It's quite possible that over the next 40 years, all kinds of other stuff wound up in the bottles as the company and its products expanded. The newer ones that are dug primarily in the UK were certainly mass produced and probably had various different products in them. Why we ever started arguing about what single product was in the bottle, I'll never know. Now we can all be shiny, happy people holding hands and let peace and freedom rule eternal. God bless Price's Patent Candle Company. Amen!

John.

 

[Bluegrass]

Very neat that you have that photo, you'd think there'd be more. I think my partner still has the shards of the lime green, pontiled version. I'll try to get a picture of them next time I see him. I wouldn't be so obstinate about the lamp oil issue if the bottle I dug had not still had the cork in it and foil remaining around the top. When I popped that cork out to clean out the contents, my entire house stank like paraffin for the next two days!

John.

 

[baltbottles]

Ok heres a question for you. What do you think was in the wedge shaped pontiled Davis & Miller Druggists Baltimore bottles these are about the same size as the price's bottles and the same wedge shape? Theres also 3 or 4 other american pontiled "medicines" in this size and shape what do you think these contained?

Chris

 

[Bluegrass]

Hi Chris.... I'd love to see pics of them. Never even heard of them. Do you think they were trying to rival the Price's company? By the way, the snow should be melting up there soon[&:]

John.