A Big Tree

Occasionally discussions on popular FB antique bottle websites overlap with this site and Western Bottle News. 

(please note that in the interest of disclosure, I've made a couple of corrections and changes to both copy and photos for this, the finished draft)

A line in a post a couple of days ago caught my attention. It read, "I personally have not ruled out so and so, you know the company that made the only western chestnut flask?" 

Uhh, not so fast on the chestnut flask... The only handled western chestnut flask...

Not too long ago a chestnut, of origin unknown, appeared on eBay. 

 

 

I got a few inquiries about the bottle via the WWG website. The bottle was embossed "BIG TREE", and pictured a big tree with a hole cut through the center and a wagon being pulled by some sort of critter emerging from the hole. It was boldly struck, had a crudely applied top with some spillover, and a Riley IT closure. 

 

Several folks suggested British. My response was the same to all; 'I don't know, but I'll look into it". The listing hammered for a respectable amount.

True to promise, I looked into it, and looked and.... Nothing.

I did run across the history of the tree that I’d remembered. It was called the Wawona Tree and was located in the Mariposa Grove of redwoods located in the southern part of Yosemite. The hole through the base was said to be “large enough for a coach and (a team of) four (horses or oxen)”. Best I could tell, the hole was cut sometime in the 1880's. Well, it was a start.

Then one day, while perusing the "Pacific Wine and Spirit Review" (a rag published in the 90's), I came across the smoking gun; an advertisement for none other than Big Tree! 

 

 

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Calwa was an abbreviation for the "California Wine Association". It was a worldwide wine concern, founded ca. 1892 - 1894, operating in Calif., with original headquarters in San Francisco. It was formed to insure the survival of numerous smaller winemakers during the national depression that was raging at the time. Members included; Charles Carpy of C. Carpy & Company; Charles Kohler and Henry Kohler of Napa Valley Wine Company, Kohler and Frohling, C. Carpy & Company, B. Dreyfus & Company, and Kohler and Van Bergen; Arpad Haraszthy of Arpad Haraszthy & Company; Albert Lachman, Henry Lachman, and Samuel Lachman of S. Lachman & Company and Lachman & Jacobi; winemaker John Frohling; Benjamin Dreyfus of B. Dreyfus & Company; and Nicholas Van Bergen of Kohler and Van Bergen. The firms Aguillon & Busatelli and C. Schilling & Company, both part of the association's combined holdings, were also represented. 

 

 

 

 

The membership was later whittled down somewhat and the remaining primary members are listed on one of the letterheads posted in this article.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An especially impressive display was set up by Calwa at the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893. The following ad promoted their efforts, and the introduction of the Big Tree brand. Interestingly, the ca. of 1893 puts initial production of the bottles smack dab in the middle of the "German Connection" era.

 

 

According to one report of the era, "Wines at the Columbian Exposition sat inside an elaborate grotto constructed at the base of a 28 by 28 feet California Redwood Tree. A cluster of grapes, glass, and bottle of wine intersect the base of a post in the middle of the tree trunk that flies flags representing California and the United States" "Every inch of space in the Columbian exhibition and its illustration celebrated grape culture in California and its role in western progress."

Boy, did they pull out the stops when they decided to jump in with both feet. The headquarters building that they had constructed was one of the most imposing in SF (prior to the 06 earthquake and fire when it was reduced to a big black pile of rubble).

 

It turned out that a large share of their target market for the Big Tree brand was indeed located in Europe (England specifically). But an equally large share of their “audience” for the brand was located on the west coast of America. 

 

 

They also exported huge volumes of wine by the barrel, both abroad and to Hawaii.

I was originally able to document three existing examples of the bottle; two green (similar in color to the London Warner’s Safe Cure) and one red amber (“German Connection”?). All have Riley patent IT closures, with one sporting the original embossed gutta percha "picture" stopper. From what I was able to discern from some of the written material, the red flagon contained their red and the green flagon their white wine offerings.

Recently a green example was offered for sale from none other than England. And so there are four.

I believe the red and green examples pictured here were the large size, the quart, and the green with the flat bottom seen here was the smaller pint offering.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Calwa apparently was a prodigious promoter. No shortage of promotional items were missed.

For whatever reason though, the Big Tree flagons are an extreme rarity of a crossover western picture bottle.

 

Move over Kolb & Denhard, the Nonpareil chestnut now has company.

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PS: Darned if I didn't get an email from a "chap" in Ireland who follows WWG. He'd found one on the eastern seashore of the Emerald Isle. It's pretty well sandblasted. My guess is that it washed over from England. 

Update!

Back in April, I published this article on the Big Tree brand, which originated in California, courtesy of the California Wine Association; (CALWA).

 

 It was conjectured that one of their primary markets, beside the east and west coasts of the US, was England.

 

 Sure enough, a bottle had been recently found on the east coast shore of Ireland, just across the English Channel from Great Britain.

Imagine my surprise when one of our WWG readers send me a link to an auction item. Yep, another Big Tree "chestnut". Big difference though, between the documented variants and this example. It's made of wood and is 37 inches tall!

 

 

 

Yep, an advertising piece and quite probably unique! (many thanks Brandon, for making us aware of this amazing piece of history!)

D

But Willllbur~

 

A horse is a horse , of course, of course… (theme song from Mr. Ed, the talking horse)

Well, this horse probably has some tales to tell, but he’s keeping them to himself.

I got an email from a non-collector yesterday, asking if I could give him some info on a bottle that he’d found in the basement of a house, located in the Haight Ashbury of SF in 1970. I provided what I could and he asked if I could help him find a new home for it.

Barnett listed this variant as #803. The base mark is 684H. It’s got a crisp strike and, based on the photos, is a two piece mold. It was blown at the tail end of the run for the Abramson Heunisch glass factory located in SF, (just before they became IPGC), ca. 1901. This base mark indeed throws off the accepted time line for the Gold Dust series by a number of years. Although I’ve not personally handled the bottle, it has what appears to be annealing damage on the neck; quite probably related to the tooling process of the top.

He’s interested in finding a home for it. See attached photos.

If it’s of interest, feel free to shoot me a price that works for you and I’ll pass it on to Roy.

Bruce

 

 

Dudley

Dudley

I can't help thinking about the brainless cartoons I watched as a kid back in the late 50's and early 60's when I hear that name. The name conjures up remembrances of Rocky & Bullwinkle, Boris and Natasha, and of course Dudley Do-Right, the dim whittled Canadian Mounty. Dudley had a real circle of friends. They included his faithful horse, named "Horse", and his equally faithful dog, ironically named "Faithful Dog". Cornball kids humor by any stretch these days.

Imagine my surprise when a good (I almost typed faithful) friend and fellow whiskey collector called from Northern Cal. the other day and asked if I'd ever heard of a Dudley. I bit my tongue at first and then replied, "only on cartoons". He said, "No really, a Dudley Brandy". "It's got the guys name on it, is a Ginger Brandy, and is embossed San Francisco too". Realizing that he was serious, my response was no; but send me a picture just the same.

He did. And I'll be darned if the photo wasn't of a bottle I've never heard of, or seen even a busted fragment of, in all the years I've been a western whiskey guy. Amber, applied top, heavy play dough type embossing, and shaped like your basic Abernathy or other SF Ginger Brandy with a short neck and a long body. He wasn't yanking my chain after all~ Wow!  A newly discovered western whiskey. I couldn't wait to start my research on this piece.

It took a couple of days but the fruits of my labor were rewarded. At first blush, the bottle had an ever so  slight resemblance to the German Connection late applied tops of the ca. 1890 era. Closer examination though, dispelled that hunch as the embossing style and the top were wrong. Embossed "Dr. Worth's / White / Ginger Brandy / A.A. Dudley & Co. /  San Francisco", it was loaded with seed bubbles, displayed with notable overall glass character, and just had to date ca. 1895 or earlier.

My first stab was in the 1895 SF Directory for a Dr. Worth. Strike one. Working back ward for ten years saw one swing and a miss after another. Numerous Worth's appeared in the listings, ranging from tailors to brick masons (and everything in between), but no Dr's or anything related to patent medicines or liquor.

Flustered, I took a breather. And then the light came on... What if there was no Dr. Worth? What if the brand was simply another of the brandings of a wholesale liquor dealer trying to cash in on the current fad of pushing a combination of liquor and "good for you" stuff endorsed by a "Dr. So and So" !?

Falling back on a target search dating of 1890, I entered his last name and struck it rich. A.A. Dudley appeared in the Crocker Directory as a dealer in patent Medicines. 


Access to another website revealed that Dudley was exactly as suspected; a hustler. The 1889 listing provides a tidbit of info as it lists his name, in addition to just the initials AA. His full name was Arey A. Dudley.

On October 2, 1889, he'd patented Electro Germicide; hoping to cash in on the, at that time, new aged "science" of  electricity and its impact on health. The product was registered as being sold in two tone handled stoneware gallon jugs. No embossed, or debossed, examples of this product have been found so one can only assume that it was sold in paper label form only. And probably not successfully at that~

Working backward, it was determined that Dudley first appeared in SF in 1889 as a patent medicine peddler. Although his business address was San Francisco, his residence is listed as Oakland. It was not uncommon for those of money to reside in the east bay, and commute to their businesses in "The City" via ferry. Thus, we can conclude that Dudley was at least "comfortable".

An even more significant find about A. A. Dudley also popped up during the search of 1889. He was also in the bitters business! Not just some paper label, flash in the pan product, but in reality, one of the rarest of the rare. He was the wholesale agent for "Dr. Harvey's Blood Bitters"; (and not the Cassin Bros. as has previously been taken as gospel).

1891 was status quo.

The 1892 directory shows a move, and his residence is now shown as 1217 Fell in SF. 

 

And then, nothing. No personal, no business and no obituary listings. A. A. Dudley was a four year splash in the western cure, bitters and whiskey markets; hawking an electric "cure", a next to one of a kind bitters, and a one of a kind western whiskey. 

What a splash he made!

Urgent!

Please note that the FOHBC board of directors is committed to rescheduling the show in Reno in 2022 at the same venue. Given a host of unknown conditions this goal may not be possible but it is our hope it will come to fruition.