Wire bail and porcelain stoppers on crown-top bottles (?)

[epackage]

Art Deco sodas would be too late for that stopper but I assume someone decided to reuse a stopper from another bottle so the bottle could be used repeatedly. Unlike regular earlier crown tops, where merchants didn't want to get rid of all their porcelain stoppers and wire bails and invest in a crown top machine and boxes of crown tops. So they used their remaining stock of porcelain stoppers until they ran out and had to bite the bullet. I have stoneware bottles from the 1890's that have lightning stoppers on them because they could be reused over and over without have to add corks and tie them down...

 

[nhpharm]

I've seen some quart decos with lightning stoppers. I'm assuming it was because these allowed the bottles to be reclosed after use since you weren't likely to guzzle the entire bottle.

 

[CanadianBottles]

This is an interesting footnote, there is at least one ACL crown top soda that's local to me which was always fitted with a lightning stopper from the bottler. They aren't that old but I'm pretty sure they're from the ACL era, I'm guessing the 70s.

 

[CanadianBottles]

I've seen some quart decos with lightning stoppers. I'm assuming it was because these allowed the bottles to be reclosed after use since you weren't likely to guzzle the entire bottle.

I'm curious, have you ever seen one with a stopper marked with the bottler's name? I was thinking the quarts would be the most likely ones to have them, but like Evans says those could have been used by home brewers as well.

 

[UncleBruce]

This is an interesting footnote, there is at least one ACL crown top soda that's local to me which was always fitted with a lightning stopper from the bottler. They aren't that old but I'm pretty sure they're from the ACL era, I'm guessing the 70s.

View attachment 214510
View attachment 214511

This stopper reminds me of the GROLSCH beer bottles still is stores today. Interesting.

 

[SFBEER]

I'm a collector of crown-top deco bottles and I have a question about them. I sometimes see for sale a deco crown-top bottle with a wire bail stopper. It just seems weird to me, so I wanted to ask - was soda sometimes sold by a bottler in a crown-top bottle with a wire bail stopper, or were the wire bail stoppers only put on somehow by soda customers after they started drinking from the bottle?

I am a collector of San Francisco brewery memorabilia. Some of the bottles come with both crown and blob variant tops. The history of closures is therefore of interest to me. I also have a library of books relating to the brewing and beer bottling industries. One of my books is from an Eastern Convention that took place in 1892. On the rear cover is an ad for crown stoppers for bottles, circa 1892. I was surprised they were available that early and did a little research on William Painter of Baltimore, the inventor. Seems breweries and bottlers experimented with the closure as early as the 1890's. Some of the crown closure bottles are actually older than the blobs! The transition to all crowns for beer bottles took place around 1906 though export beers were corked. (Patent or lightning stoppers were made to use on bottles for local use while beers that were shipped were corked.) Ads appeared in theatre programs around 1906 showing how to open the crown bottles. I have postcards used to order beer from around 1908 and you could specify either crown stoppers or patent stoppers. I imagine the patent stoppers (Hutter porcelain vs. the all-metal lightning) were applied to the crown bottles. I have plenty of examples of this. The deco sodas are far too late to have had original patent stoppers. I like the theory that they were placed by a basement root beer bottler using the deco sodas and refilling them. Thomas Jacobs drjacobs@sbcglobal.net

 

[hemihampton]

Sodasandbeers was the only one that got it right. Everything else is simply speculation.
The lightning stoppers were sold for that very purpose. And were sized to fit a crown top
rather than a blob top. Which require a longer top wire. Although some bottlers used them
early on when the switch to crown tops was made. There are even transitional crown tops
that have a longer lower part of the lip. This was to accommodate the blob top sized wire
bail.

That's about the same thing I said except I said Beer instead Root Beer?

 

[hemihampton]

I am a collector of San Francisco brewery memorabilia. Some of the bottles come with both crown and blob variant tops. The history of closures is therefore of interest to me. I also have a library of books relating to the brewing and beer bottling industries. One of my books is from an Eastern Convention that took place in 1892. On the rear cover is an ad for crown stoppers for bottles, circa 1892. I was surprised they were available that early and did a little research on William Painter of Baltimore, the inventor. Seems breweries and bottlers experimented with the closure as early as the 1890's. Some of the crown closure bottles are actually older than the blobs! The transition to all crowns for beer bottles took place around 1906 though export beers were corked. (Patent or lightning stoppers were made to use on bottles for local use while beers that were shipped were corked.) Ads appeared in theatre programs around 1906 showing how to open the crown bottles. I have postcards used to order beer from around 1908 and you could specify either crown stoppers or patent stoppers. I imagine the patent stoppers (Hutter porcelain vs. the all-metal lightning) were applied to the crown bottles. I have plenty of examples of this. The deco sodas are far too late to have had original patent stoppers. I like the theory that they were placed by a basement root beer bottler using the deco sodas and refilling them. Thomas Jacobs drjacobs@sbcglobal.net

SFBEER, You should read up on this post about Crown Tops.

EARLIEST "CROWN TOP" SODA BOTTLES 1892 - 1900

I call this Part II of my continuing interest in early soda pop bottles. However, this time I would like to focus on the early-early crown tops from around 1892 through about 1900. I am primarily interested in American made bottles, but all are welcome to post any crown soda bottle from any part...

www.antique-bottles.net

 

[M.C.Glass]

I have one quart slugplate Feigenson with a bail top I've often wondered about. I has the age, and there are no scrape or twist marks in the patina on the wires. It could have been/probably was added by a consumer afterward who wanted to use the bottle over and over.
But looking closer, I notice all these slug bottles I have from Feigenson seem to have a sharp edge on the bottom of the crown top, like they were made to accommodate the wire?