Collecting Bottles Illustrated on Ephemera
![](https://www.ephemerasociety.org/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=kernel&p=image&src=%7B%22file%22%3A%22wp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F11%2FCollecting-Bottle-and-Ephemera-1-80.jpg%22%2C%22thumbnail%22%3A%22auto%2C%2C%22%7D&hash=f0d9b4a5)
Or, Digging through paper instead of dirt
Like many folks my age, I began collecting ephemera back in the 1960s as a result of being a bottle collector looking for advertising “go-withs”. I was in college, married, and casting about for a career when the “bottle bug” struck. As a result of researching and then hunting for 19th-century logging camps, crawling under old houses, and digging outhouses and backyard trash pits, I ended up majoring in History of the American West and went on for an advanced degree in Archival Librarianship. As a result? Over 40 years in the history profession!
While my collecting of bottle-related paper advertising was put on hold during most of my professional career (so as to not present any public perception of conflict of interest), I kept much of my old collection and began to add to it since my retirement. I decided to narrow down my interest in bottle-related ephemera to pieces that actually showed what the labeled or embossed bottle looked like. In most cases, these were product-specific trade cards, billheads, letterheads, covers, circulars, almanacs, advertising postcards, and other printed material from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Or, in the time-period jargon of bottle collectors, “Pre-Prohibition”.
So, in answer to the clarion call for ESA members to share portions of their collection (or collections), I offer the following as examples of ephemera illustrating bottles.
![](https://www.ephemerasociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/1-Hostetters.png)
![](https://www.ephemerasociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/2-PanamaCanal.png)
![](https://www.ephemerasociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/3-Ponds-Rex.png)
![](https://www.ephemerasociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/4-Wheat-Bitters.png)
![](https://www.ephemerasociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/5-Cyrus-Noble.png)
![](https://www.ephemerasociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/6-Four-Cards.png)
![](https://www.ephemerasociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/7-Simmonds-Nabob.png)
![](https://www.ephemerasociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/8-Medicines-1.png)
![](https://www.ephemerasociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/9-Foss-Tolu-1.png)
![](https://www.ephemerasociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/10-Portland.png)