Mystery Bottle from Johnson City, Tenn.
Another mystery and strangely enough it is yet again connected with Johnson City, TN. While perusing my local antique shop, I happened upon a strange looking deco bottle in the display case. Noticing that the sticker claimed the bottle was from Johnson City, Tenn., I decided to ask about it and upon inspection found that while it did indeed have the town name on the bottom of the bottle, there was absolutely no other indicator of who owned it or what was bottled in it. I recognized the bottle maker mark as coming from the Chattanooga Glass Company.
While doing some research on the bottle I found that the bottle design had been patented by J. F. Harrison, who owned the Chattanooga Glass Company during this period, on August 23, 1927. This helps me narrow down the period which this bottle might have been produced which would fall into the period between late 1927 and say the late 1930's when the new ACLs (painted label) bottles were beginning to enter the market. It is most likely that this bottle was a soda water bottle due to the used of decos as soda water bottles during this time, and the lack of brand information which would be idiotic if you were promoting a certain drink.
So the next thing is to identify companies that were in operation during this time period, who might have ordered a bottle with not identifying information besides the town name, and who have known evidence in the form of similar bottles to the layout of the town name on this particular bottle. First bottling company I can think of is the Nu-Icy Bottling Company of Johnson City, Tenn., who's Nu-Icy bottle dated 1928 has the same layout for the city name as our mystery bottle. This company appears to have shown up in either late 1928 or early 1929, is listed in the 1930-31 city directory; however, is not listed in the 1935 city directory. The only thing that puzzles me is why would a bottling company who's main product, Nu-Icy is already a flavor line, order a bottle for an soda water line as well?
The next bottler starts out around 1929 and that is the Orange Crush Bottling Company of Johnson City, Tenn. One of their Orange Crush bottles from the mid to late 1930's shares the same city name pattern as our mystery bottle, and while Orange Crush at this time has about four flavors, it isn't inconceivable that they would invest in bottles for a flavor line as later on they pick up the Old Colony line which was a flavor line. As their main bottle was a deco bottle it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to believe that they would use another for this flavor line.
There is also the Quality Kist Beverages Company which shows up around this same time; however, I have yet to see one of their bottles which resembles this one’s city name layout at all. Then there is the name change, and product change, of the Chero-Cola Bottling Company to the Nehi Bottling Company. Nehi of course being a flavor line as well; however, what are the chances that they may have picked up some of these before getting the Nehi deco bottles? I don't know, but that is a bit far fetched and I only include this as a possibility. It is also possible that this bottle is somehow connected to the Coca-Cola Bottling Company as Chattanooga Glass Company is a large supplier of the well known "Hobbleskirt" bottles for that company; however, Coca-Cola already has at least five different designs for Soda Water bottles that the company could, and did, use.
That leaves us with one more possibility, that started during this period, and that I have yet to see a bottle for, and that is The East Tennessee Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company, which is listed in the 1930-31 city directory; however, is not listed in either the 1928 or the 1935. This suggests that they, like Nu-Icy, didn't last very long, which might also explain the uncommonly of this bottle in the area. The ad from the same city directory states that they are bottling Pepsi-Cola and Pilot Ginger Ale, could this bottle be either of those? I doubt the Pepsi-Cola would have been bottled in a bottle without a brand logo, even though this bottle does share some interesting characteristics with the "Pinched Waist" bottle design Pepsi was just starting to use during this period. Pilot Ginger Ale; however, had only been in existence since 1927 with a trademark registration date of August 6, 1929, which would put it squarely during this period.
One more thing to note is that this bottle design was indeed used by the Jackson Miss Bottling Works for the Lake's Beverage line which included a Lake's Grape, Lake's Celery (that one in green), and came in at least two different sizes; however, all of these bottles that I have seen have the Lake's logo included on the bottle including the Lake's Grape which is positioned much like the Pepsi logo on the "pinched waist" Pepsi bottle. This mystery will prove to be much harder to figure out than the Royal Crown Bottling Works of East Tennessee was due to the fact that to actually verify that these bottles were being used by a particular company you would have to find a picture or an advert that actually shows the bottle and the company name together. Together we can find where this bottle fits in Johnson City's long history of bottles, with a little luck this mystery will unravel as well.
The mystery Deco bottle
This is the design patent information for the mystery bottle.
