Reproduction Warner Bottles? Uncovering the truth takes sleuths around the world By Mike Seeliger
T
here has always been great admiration for the artisanship that was exemplified in the flasks, figural bitters and medicines that were made in the 1800s, and in the past years there have been lots of reproductions made.
hard to tell from the original. (Dog River also states “We are the only source of historically correct and fully authentic U.S. Army Hospital Department Bottles. Our reproduction is blown in a snap case and pontiled as is the original.”)
Luckily, the Clevenger Brothers — Tom, Reno and Allie of Clayton, N.J. — salvaged a lot of the molds and produced a few nice bottles.
This brings me to the meat of my story. Recently, I found in Australia a clear reproduction of the Warner’s Safe Kidney & Liver Cure bottle. The bottle obviously came from the same manufacturer that made the cobalt-blue version and the light amber one. These reproductions were made using a particularly good mold of an original Kidney & Liver cure bottle or the original mold. Unlike the Wheaton’s Frank’s Kidney & Liver Cure and the Crownford Warner’s Kidney & Liver Cure which has the Crownford China Co. name stamped in the base of the bottle, these bottles are exactly like the original.
In the 1960s and ’70s many reproduction flasks and medicines seemed to appear in gift shops, floral shops and home furnishing outlets. Again, these were genuinely nice reproductions and appear in many bottle collections along with the older original bottles. Again, in the 1970s, a cheaper, fast-made group of reproductions was produced by Wheaton of Millville, N.J., which included fake pontil marks, etc. But I do not really want to go into those reproductions or the history of reproductions in this article. If you search reproduction bottles you will find an incredible amount of good, very authentic-looking reproductions coming out of China. Some of these are quite scary and no doubt have entered the antique market. I was amazed at the “black glass” reproductions that, without examining in person, from pictures appear to be the real thing, complete with seals and kick-up bases. Then there is the “Dog River Glassworks Co.” which reproduces Civil War reproduction bottles for use in re-enactments. The Old Sachem’s Bitters is almost exact and is extremely
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Antique Bottle & Glass Collector
Here are a couple of ways to tell them apart from the original. First, the bottle is machine made. Mold marks go all the way up the neck to the top of the bottle. Second, they are flatlipped, rather than round. Then, the third way is to notice that the “c” in Cure is a small “c” Now, Warner did produce a Kidney & Liver Cure with the small “c,” and it is a true variant to us Warner collectors. In fact, if you notice the reverse Safe bottle has a small “c” for the word cure. These bottles have been around for some time and were made in the 1960s or 1970s. Who made them is unknown.
Machine made marks on neck.
Does anyone out there have an idea? The cobalt bottles are a genuinely nice example to add to a Warner collection because they add nice color. The light amber often is sold as an original, and since H.H. Warner was such a stickler for product trademarks, he refused to allow any bottle of his cure to be made in a bottle that was not amber in color. Some are exceptionally light amber and are valued by collectors. This reproduction Warner is nice light amber and again adds to one’s collection. Last year this clear one came along. With the clear ones being found in England, this proved to be an oddity but was quickly identified as a reproduction. The H.H. Warner & Co. Ltd company out of England in the 1900s did not make branches adhere to the amber glass policy so the foreign bottle appears in shades of green, teal and even aqua clear. Many of these were produced 1910-20. But again, this is an entirely different story.
