ANTIQUE GINGER BEER
BOTTLES
Ginger beer the Coca-Cola
of its day. In the early part of the 19th 
century ginger beer quickly became a very
popular drink. It was manufactured by large breweries, chemists,
corner shops and even in peoples kitchens some was sold in glass
bottles, but the vast majority was sold in stoneware bottles this
is where my interest lies.
Until the 1880s the name of the ginger beer maker was usually impressed into the soft clay using a raised letter mould. Then a new method of transfer printing quickly gained favour this allowed makers to advertise their name more prominently and add trade marks and in many cases fancy art work to catch the customers eye. These are the treasures I seek out. Bottles from long forgotten companies some only in business for a short time and others from large breweries with several different transfer designs.
Where do you find these bottles..? attics, cellars, car boot sales, antique shops, bottle shows but best of all digging.
...........
Its simple, find your self
a nice rubbish tip dating from 1880-1920 arrive with fork and
shovel and start digging, about four hours later you should have
a large hole ,a large pile of muck and with some luck a selection
of bottles. To pull a ginger beer bottle from the ground where it
has laid for the last hundred years is a treat indeed.
My collection of local transferred bottles numbers some 167 different examples and this just from the Norfolk area . Dating your bottles may require some detective work a search through the records will tell you when a company was started, changed names, changed address, etc, compare this to the transfer details and you should get a good idea of the date. Another very reliable method was supplied by J.Bourne of Denby one of the biggest producers of stoneware bottles if you look at the impressed potters mark there should be two numbers , these numbers relate to the year of manufacture e.g. 07= 1907, 12= 1912 ,you cant get better than that !
The term transfer leads to
some confusion the design was actually applied by hand stamping
with a copper plate after the first firing and prior to a dip in
liquid glaze and the second firing. Norfolk being a very
agricultural county with low wages sometimes seems to have rather
plain transfers compared to the more affluent parts of the
country, but the bottles are highly prized with rare ones seldom
changing hands and when they do usually to other keen collectors.
The cream of the transferred pictorial bottles supplied to various parts of the country must surely have been produced by A.W. Buchan & Co whose art work for something as mundane as a drinks bottle can only be described as stunning. My personal favourites are the Robert Henderson and the R.Stothert & Sons. Mr Stothert proudly putting his own bearded image onto the bottle as the trade mark.
With the coming of the 1920s the public health department began to question the advisability of re-using stone bottles and by the 30s an eventual change over to glass spelt the demise of these wonderful objects . The drink they contained seemed to lose its sparkle too, never again to be sold in the vast quantity of former years.
A selection of Norfolk bottles............
Useful information...magazines on bottle collecting available from............
B.B.R. 5 Ironworks Row Elsecar Project Wath Road Elsecar
Barnsley South Yorkshire S74 8HJ http://www.bbrauctions.co.uk/
Bottles and Bygones 30 Brabant Road Cheadle Hulme
Cheadle Cheshire SK8 7AU
Norfolk Ginger Beer Bottles (an illustrated guide)
14 Kered Close Hellesdon Norwich Norfolk NR6 6UZ
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