Sad News: Club Member RICHARD COPPLER has passed away.

Sad news, club member RICHARD COPPLER has passed away. He was a driving force in the club for years. He will be missed. Our condolences to the Coppler family. 

Obituary:
Coppler, 82, of Fostoria, died Saturday, Feb. 27, 2016, at the Good Shepherd Home.
He was born July 27, 1933, in Fostoria, to parents Christ and Orpha (Woodruff) Coppler
Richard married Charlotte Ayers on Nov. 19, 1959, in Columbus, Mississippi, and she survives him in Fostoria.
Also surviving Richard are his daughters, Cindy (John) David and Sharon (John) Myers, of Fostoria; sons, Jeff and Tim Coppler, both of Illinois; brother, Larry Nichols, of Oceanside, California; sister, Joyce Sharpless, of Indiana; grandchildren, Whitney Brickner, Sara Hernandez, Morgan Hoerig, Jordan David and Jesse Coppler; and seven great-grandchildren.
He was preceded in death by his parents; son, Richard C. Coppler; brothers, Dencel, Chuck, Gerald, Donald, Paul and Leonard Coppler; and sisters Evelyn Sheets and Lois Smyser.
Richard was a 1952 graduate of Fostoria High School and was a U.S. Air Force veteran, serving during the Korean War. He worked at the Fostoria Fire Department, retiring in 1985.
He was a member of the Fostoria Sportsman’s Club, American Legion, AmVets and Eagles Club, Fostoria Glass Gallery and Historical Society and the Findlay Antique Bottle Club.
Visitation will be from 2-4 p.m. and 6-8 p.m. Wednesday, March 2, at the Harrold-Floriana Funeral Home in Fostoria.
Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. Thursday, March 3, at the funeral home, with military honors by the United Veterans of Fostoria. Rev. Donald Goodwin will be officiating. The place of burial will be Fountain Cemetery in Fostoria.

Funeral info here --http://www.hffh.net/notices/Richard-Coppler

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Naughty History of Valentine's Meat Juice in the Little Amber Bottle - Happy St. Valentine's Day, Antique Bottle Collectors

You don't need teeth to enjoy Valentine's Meat Juice!

Aah, love.

By Marianne Dow

Valentine's Meat Juice has true love as it's raison d'être. Mann S. Valentine Jr. was desperate to save his dying wife, Maria.

For weeks she had been unable to retain any nourishment, and Mann was distraught while watching his wife starve to death. Physicians could do no more. Valentine became persuaded that she needed juice extracted from meat, with its “strength-giving properties.”

He went down to his basement with a chemistry set, and with sheer determination and rudimentary knowledge from college courses, he worked to concoct a mixture to revive his wife. He worked night after night in the cellar, and on New Year’s Eve 1870, he administered to Maria the first batch of meat juice.

Mann’s elixir worked, and Maria recovered.

[Info from this Richmondmagazine.com article by Harry Kolatz Jr.]

The juice reached its greatest success and acknowledgment in 1881 when President Garfield said, after wounded from a bullet in an assassination attempt, that he breakfasted on Valentine’s Meat Juice along with toast and poached egg to get better.

In Mann's own words:

Read the full text of the advertising booklet pictured above, here. It is mostly testimonials. No photos.

A Valentine's Meat Juice bottle sits on a shelf at Boston's new Massachusetts General Hospital medical history museum (link). [Photo source]

[Photo source]

The Valentine Meat Juice Company used 15 to 20 THOUSAND pounds of flesh from beef cattle a day to make the juice. 

Bottle collector Ed Faulkner shared this memory:

"One of the Richmond club members once talked to someone whose father had worked at the plant that produced the meat juice. It appears that there was always plenty of "squeezed" beef after the juice was removed & it was available to employees for free. Although they were dirt poor, the man said, they always had beef on the table!"

LOVE Potion -- It's The Oldest Profession

Valentine's Meat Juice came in this neat little amber bottle. It is pretty common,  and of little interest to bottle collectors, but it has another interesting and rather sordid history, as it turns out. It's connected with "The Oldest Profession", if you know what I mean. No, not butcher.

What bottle collectors will find interesting is that archaelogical digs around brothels found a great many VMJ bottles.

" Prostitutes ate better and dressed better than their working class contemporaries. Some of their purchasing power, however, was spent on proprietary medicines such as Valentine's Meat Juice, promoted as a cure for sexually transmitted diseases, aka social diseases. "

But wait, there's more...

There's even more sordidness associated with this little bottle...

Valentine's Meat Juice figured prominently in a famous murder case. ''The Case of Mrs. Maybrick'' was written about in The Elements of Murder By John Emsley.

Apparently the Mrs. killed her husband by poisoning his Valentine's Meat Juice with arsenic!

And I used to think it was such a cute little bottle -- who knew? Well...Happy Valentine's Day, anyway!

ALL BOTTLED UP
It's about 3" tall, and embossed VALENTINE'S MEAT JUICE. Much harder to find with the paper labels:

[Photo source]

Some other Valentine's Meat Juice collectibles:

Magazine ad

Dose glass

Chemist's invoice (source)

Mann S. Valentine

The Valentine Museum

According to the Valentine Museum, now known as the Valentine Richmond History Center (Virginia), Mann S. Valentine, Jr. (1824-1893), the museum's founder, made his fortune with the creation and production of Valentine's Meat Juice, a health tonic made from pure beef juice.


Mann shared his love of history with his brother, renowned sculptor Edward V. Valentine. Mann laid the foundation for the museum in 1892; when he died in 1893, he provided the original bequest for the Valentine Museum, leaving his personal collection of art and artifacts and the 1812 Wickham House.

The Valentine Museum, the first private museum in the City of Richmond, opened in 1898; Edward Valentine served as its first president from its opening until his death in 1930. In his own will, he left an incredible collection of his sculpture, papers, furniture and memorabilia to the museum that still bears his family name.

While alive, The Valentine's Meat Juice success provided Mann S. Valentine with more than enough money to do what he wanted. He collected art, and his home was a gathering place for artists.

Here are some photos from the museums collection that show Mann S. Valentine posing as different emotions. I end with these as I think it shows he was an interesting and emotional man, and it's easy to see how his love for his wife would have sent him down into his basement to create the magic potion that would keep her alive.

See more from this series of photos on the Richmond Museum's website here.

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Everyone's Talking About the Muncie Fruit Jar Collectors January 2016 Show

Shared on our Facebook page:

The January 2016 hotel/room-hopping 3-day event was very well attended, the usual suspects, as well as so many new attendees. 

Yes, this is a bunch of jar nuts!

As one commenter put it: "It's always fun but this year was great for several reasons. The biggest reason was all the new faces in the hallways. Not just new collectors but seasoned collectors who had never been to the Muncie circus. It was exciting, it was rewarding (new stock), and it was enjoyable to no end. It was great to see the old heads again, but so refreshing to meet new people who had never been here before and willing to part with cash for quality goods. "

Read more on the Muncie Fruit Jar Get Together @ the Ball Jar Collectors Forum -- link.

There's a Facebook page for the Muncie event -- just ask to join to see all the fun photos - link.

A few more jar collectors at the club meeting. 

"Only at Muncie do ya drink alcohol from a clear Christmas Mason pint!!!"

[Photo of Jim Sears by Leslie Fairchild]

Lots of jars set up in the rooms -- what did you miss? Plan on attending next year!

Read about the excitement that is Muncie here.

Join the Facebook Fruit Jar collectors group here.

'Like' our FINBOTCLUB Facebook page so you won't miss anything we share there.
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Fizzy Origins of the Torpedo Shape Soda Bottle

Shared on our Facebook page:

Fun article on history of TORPEDO BOTTLES (read it here).

"Torpedo shaped bottles appear… at the end of the 18th century. The glass bottles made at the time were often not strong enough to contain the pressure of the gas and could explode (the bottom blew off). Glass capable of holding fizzy liquids was only made in Britain at the time and was very expensive; as a result it was reserved for expensive liquids such as Champaign. The torpedo shape allowed cheaper glass to maintain the necessary strength to hold carbonated drinks."

And of course someone then invented the “torpedo bottle stand”, even though torpedo bottles were designed not to stand up.

"The majority of these bottles - round bottomed or torpedo - date from the 1870s to the 1910s." [Source: sha.org]

Learn more the history on that explosive FIZZ, read "And All That Fizz!"

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Antique Trader Publisher Promotes Bottle Collecting

Shared on our Facebook page:

Antique bottles featured in Antique Trader - link - always love it when the antique trade papers give our beloved bottles the spotlight. Antique Trader features bottles often, and they have over 140,000 ''Facebook likes'' plus their website and print readers. That's a lot of people being exposed to antique bottle collecting :)

Antique Trader publishes a bottles price guide too. Use Amazon's ''Look Inside" link to get a many-page preview here.

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How To Read an Antique Bottle - Bill Lindsey Explains It All

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Great long interview with expert Bill Lindsey, about evaluating antique bottles, over on The Collectors Weekly site -- LINK..

You can learn so much about bottles on Bill Lindsey's Historic Glass Bottle Identification & Information Website, from Bottle Typology & Diagnostic Shapes to Glassmaking & Glassmakers Marks and much more.

How many kinds of bottles are there? Zillions. In 1906 the Illinois Glass Company listed their available shapes in a 300 page catalog -- wow! See it here.

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Elephants and Doves for Dinner: Jumbo Peanut Butter and Dove Brand Spices

Contributing writer Joe Clevenger gives us his latest article on Cincinnati, Ohio's Frank Tea & Spice Co.'s JUMBO PEANUT BUTTER.


(If the scrolling pdf viewer box doesn't load, click to read it here.)

Thanks, Joe!

The Frank Tea and Spice Company made DOVE BRAND spices and products as well as JUMBO Peanut Butter.
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As we posted before (back at the 2010 Muncie show, video here), the green glass figural elephant Jumbo Peanut Butter bank jars have been reproduced.

A real one sold for $575 on the North American Glass (NAG) auction site's Jumbo jar collection auction. (Link)

This photo shows a side-by-side comparison.

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There is even a Frank/Bitters connection. Read about the Prairie and Plantation Bitters figural cabin bitters bottle here on Peachridge Glass.

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Speaking of elephants and doves...

That was how the artist Frieda Kahlo's parents referred to petite Frieda and her large husband, Diego Rivera. [Source]

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Here's a little history on the real JUMBO the Elephant:

" Jumbo (ca. Christmas 1860 – September 15, 1885) was the first international animal superstar, and the first African elephant to reach modern Europe alive.^[1] He was born inEast Africa, and captured there by Arabian hunters in early 1862. He was sold first to an Italian animal dealer, then to a menagerie in Germany, and then to the Jardin des Plantes inParis. Officials of the Jardin traded him to the London Zoological Gardens for a rhinoceros. Jumbo lived in the London Zoo for about 16 years, where he delighted visitors by taking them on trips around the zoo grounds in thehowdah on his back.

Jumbo was the biggest elephant in captivity. Due to this,American showman P. T. Barnum wanted Jumbo in hiscircus, eventually buying the elephant in 1882 for $10,000. Jumbo's sale initiated public outrage in Britain, and drew notice around the world. The British objected to the sale, and wrote letters to Queen Victoria urging that Jumbo remain in London. The courts ruled in Barnum's favor however, and the elephant was shipped to the United States. "Jumbomania", a fad for all things Jumbo, was born at this time. The civilized world was flooded with Jumbo neckties, jewelry, soaps, and other ornaments and souvenirs.

Jumbo debuted in the United States on Easter Sunday 1882 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. He toured with Barnum's circus for three years. On September 15, 1885, Jumbo was killed in a railway accident in St. Thomas,Ontario, Canada, at age 24. His death was met with worldwide grief and sorrow.

Barnum sued the railway, but settled for much less than he asked because he needed the goodwill of the railway to move his circus around Canada. Many conspiracy theories sprang up after Jumbo's death. One accused Barnum of causing the elephant's death with a pistol shot to the animal's eye. This theory was proven false after an examination of Jumbo's skull.

Jumbo attracted as much attention after his death as he did in life. His hide was stuffed and his bones preserved. Both were displayed first with Barnum's circus, and then with museums. Jumbo was donated to the Barnum museum at Tufts University where it became the school mascot. His hide was destroyed in a fire at Tufts in 1975. His skeleton was displayed for many years in the American Museum of Natural History, New York City. As time passed, people forgot who Jumbo was, and the skeleton was put away. Jumbo's greatest legacy is his name. "

Above excerpt is from Wikipedia. Read much more about Jumbo there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumbo

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