Hello everyone,
This is Evan again, back to share another historical bottle from Evanston Chinatown… or what’s left of it, anyway!
While cataloging artifacts excavated during 2005 and 2006, we have come across many shards from a highly decorated, green bottle. While we were initially unable to identify it, a large side panel shard immediately revealed that we were looking at a “historical flask.”
“Historical Flasks” are ornate, embossed liquor flasks that were very popular from about 1815 to 1870. With hundreds, if not thousands, of different designs, many were commemorative, depicting various advancements, heroes, and events. This Heckler Auction Catalog features many different historical flask designs. Given their high production cost, many were reused for long periods of time before being broken or discarded.
The next challenge was determining the exact type of flask these shards came from. Luckily, one of the body shards featured an image of two clasped hands. Knowing that this was a popular design, I searched through online bottle auction catalogs until I found the exact flask on page 6 of this Glass Works Auctions catalog. With a collector-made design code of GXII-11, the flask was made at an unknown Midwestern glass factory between about 1855 and 1870. While the realized price is not available, its estimated value was listed at $800-$1,200!
While we are still missing many shards from this flask, we are hopeful that more will be found as we continue to catalog more artifacts from this period of excavations. If we do, we will attempt to glue the flask back together! This makes only the second bottle that can be confidently dated prior to 1880, and the first that is likely pre-1870. As mentioned above, these bottles were frequently re-used, meaning the date of the bottle isn’t necessarily the same as when it could have been deposited into the archaeological record in Evanston Chinatown.
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