Over the years, I have picked up a number of early pontiled western sodas. I prefer the uncleaned even if "scummy" examples over the tumbled specimens. These bottles are Gold Rush artifacts which represent some of the most wild times in our nation's history.
Here is one which remains a mystery to me. There is the mindset that these pontiled blobs contained holy water, but many believe that this was simply a soda or mineral water which may have focused on the lonely faith based miner as it's target market. I believe these are mainly found in the Sierra foothills, but would be very interested to learn more about this bottle. Does anyone know who sold these, or have any more information in addition to Markota's research?
The Holy Water has always been one of my favorite sodas. They are tough to get, as I've only seems a couple of them in the last 15 years. My brother & I tried to team up & win the one that sold a year or two ago in Jeff's auction but weren't able to keep up with the top bidder. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThese sodas were distributed out of Georgetown Ca The factory was on lower main st. and run by a man named Leffert. He also distributed the c c & b soda as 5 whole and many broken examples are found in the area. MAX BELL
ReplyDeleteI have owned 7 of these over the years and think about 20 to 25 examples exist. I have not heard of any being found far from el dorado co. MAX
ReplyDeleteNice pictures & article!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad Max weighed in on this as he has dug and owned more of the cross examples than anyone else I've heard of. Like Max says, I do not know of any examples found outside of the CA gold country.
I've personally only seen 4 whole examples through the years. But if there's only 7 or two dozen, they are very illusive and rarely come up for sale. I haven't heard of one being dug in recent years either.
When I sold my soda collection to Dwayne A & Mike S, I grabbed my cross example back at Downieville because it just screams early CA goldrush history. It's darker green than the posted picture, whittled, never tumbled so it still has the total pontil covered with faded yellow paint.
If you have a chance to land one of these blob tops, you better jump on it. They don't get a lot of respect due to the lack of embossing, but I just love the history they represent.
Thanks again for the article and info,
Denny