Rare Cobalt Blue Farmacia Zambeletti Medicine Bottle / Milano Italy / History & Collectibles

Great Antiques Bottles Info on Collectors Weekly

Collector's Weekly, the informative reference and ebay listings-tracker site has a super BOTTLES section, with articles and resource links, and best of all, it's a one-stop place to see the MOST WATCHED bottles on ebay, so you don't miss any. They also give you the recent CLOSED prices. All on one page, w/thumbnail pix, and links to the items. It will save you hours of ebay surfing. And it's FREE! Here's the link CW BOTTLES Overview . It's a great site. Be sure to bookmark it, and check out all of their bottle collecting categories - milks, jars, bitters, and so many more.

DR.LO. ZAMBELETTI / MILANO cobalt medicine bottle (photo from Mike Urbanski)

This beautiful bottle was posted on the Bottle Collectors Facebook page by Mike Urbanski. He was looking for any info about it. So, a-googlin' I went. [Link to the post.]

Sadly, there's no comma, so it's NOT from Milan, O., birthplace of Thomas Edison. Instead, it is from Farmacia Zambeletti.

Dr. Lodovico Zambeletti

Chemist & Druggist - Volume 40 - 1892

Farmacia Zambeletti was a very successful Italian pharmacy started in 1820 in Milan, Italy (Milano en Italia), by Cavaliere Zambeletti. It stayed in his family, eventually passing to our bottle's namesake, Dr. Lodovico Zambeletti, who continued to build the business into a large chain (which only just recently, in 2001, was bought by/merged with the giant international GlaxoWellcomeSmithKlineBeechamGroup monster corporation).

Merger info excerpt from an article about Zambeletti [in Italian here, and the English translation here]:

Found a fair amount of Zambaletti items online, esp. on ebay.it, but did not find another cobalt bottle, so I think we're safe to say it's not common.