A group of empire style bottles: quart, pint and half-pint
There is another group of milk bottles that, as Rodney Dangerfield would say, “don’t get much respect.” These are the milk bottles, with no dairy name on them, but with generic slogans like “LOANED – RETURN WHEN EMPTY.” Such bottles would have been cheaper for dairies to buy than the named bottles mostly desired by collectors. Generic Slogan bottles should not be confused with “plain milk bottles” which have no wording on them. There are many plain bottles around these days, including round bottles, the early (heavier) square wide mouth bottles, and the lighter-weight square bottles, both wide and narrow mouth. These plain bottles are used for general utility household purposes, as vases, & to hold items such as marbles or buttons.
Getting back to the “Wash & Return” slogan bottles, dairies found these useful to help them meet one of their main challenges, getting their bottles back for reuse.
Early stubby quart with slogan “PLEASE WASH AND RETURN”
I have accumulated a small collection of thirteen bottles of nine types over my collecting years. The descriptions of seven of the types are in the table at the right.
Type 8 is an early style stubby quart that is 9 1/16 inches tall, as compared to the modern standard 10 1⁄4 inches. The only mark on the base is 631. The slogan is close to the bottom on the front: “PLEASE WASH AND RETURN.”
The last type I have is a stubby pint that is marked “WASH & RETURN” on the front. That is the only mark on the bottle.
My collection also contains a “plain” half-pint made by Thatcher manufacturing, N.Y. State, that is embossed “1/2 IMPERIAL PINT.”
I also have a group of empire style (bowling pin) bottles, my favorite style, that are plain, nine bottles in total, none of which have manufacturers marks, except one pint with the Dominion Glass mark (D inside a diamond).
3 PINT embossed bottles with slogans (from left to right): “TO BE WASHED AND RETURNED”, “LOANED – RETURN WHEN EMPTY”, “WASH & RETURN”
3 Sizes of embossed bottles, supplied by DeLAVAL with the slogan “TO BE WASHED AND RETURNED”
A salesman’s sample pint bottle has also found a home in my collection. It has a red colored label, with no base mark, and an applied color lable on the front that says:
CONSUMERS GLASS COMPANY LIMITED
TRADE (C inside a triangle) MARK
QUALITY – DEPENDABILITY – SERVICE
I also have from Consumers Glass main competitor, Dominion Glass, four glass ashtrays, 4 inches by 4 inches, in two styles. They are all marked:
COMPLIMENTS DOMINION GLASS COMPANY LIMITED
(D inside a diamond)
REDCLIFF ALBERTA
I hope you have found these comments about generic bottles and other collectable bottle oddities to be of interest. If you know of others, I would be pleased to hear from you at dariybob@telus.net.
Left: Salesman’s sample pint bottle with red acl. From Consumers Glass Company Ltd. Right: Complimentary Ashtrays from the Dominion Glass Company Ltd. of Redcliff, Alberta