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Herb White Antiques: How Two Early Bottles Changed Our Lives
November 24, 2009 - 12:42am
In our early years of marriage we knew nothing about antiques but our best friends changed our lives forever. These friends moved from the east coast to the Pacific northwest. My husband went to visit them a couple of years later while I stayed home with our small children. When he returned, he told of this strange new hobby craze he was introduced to.an Early American Bottle Club. He told me people were digging up old dumps all over creation and finding old bottles which showed the history of the area in which they were found. Folks were selling and trading them at swap meets too. He told me that maybe they were on to something and perhaps we should look around a little. One evening shortly thereafter, he returned home from work carrying an old unusual shaped bottle wrapped in a towel to protect it. He had discovered a roadside dump on the way home. It was an embossed REED'S lady's leg BITTERS bottle. The long neck of the bottle was in the shape of a woman's leg. It was an unusual piece, something we had never seen before. A few days later, he called me at work and asked me to meet him on the way home. Dressed in high heels, work clothes and in the drizzling rain, I pulled into an old abandoned gravel pit that had been converted to a dumping area many years previous. There was my husband with a potato hook tool, poking around in a pile of old rubble. Handing me the potato hook, he said "it's your turn". So, I took my turn, thinking that we were both a little crazy. "Oh, look!! I found a whole bottle.what does it say on the embossing: " THE GREAT / DR. / KILMER'S / SWAMP / ROOT / KIDNEY / LIVER & BLADDER / CURE / SPECIFIC". This embossing was contained within the raised embossed shape of a human kidney. I was hooked!!! Often in these later years, I recall how finding a couple of 19th century bottles, started an antique business which we have grown to love. It is still, and will always be, a never ending pursuit of learning something of past life in America by the things people lived with as well as collecting and selling the things we love. Eileen White Herb White Antiques
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