Antique Medicine Bottles Dr Cannon's Medicine Chest

ANOTHER "PATENT MEDICINE ARTICLE" FROM THE PAGES OF

ANTIQUE BOTTLE AND GLASS COLLECTOR MAGAZINE

THE MAGAZINE OF THE ANTIQUE BOTTLE COLLECTING HOBBY

antique bottles THE MEDICINE CHEST --- BY DR. RICHARD CANNON old bottles

It’s hard to turn down milk glass, tin or zinc oxides added to the basic sand, soda and lime, particularly when it’s rare and a bitters. That’s my 9^1/4” tall, square case gin bottle embossed horizontally Lohengrin / Bitters / Adolf Marcus / Von Buton / Germany // // horseshoe motif.
It seems that I’ve heard the word Lohengrin before. My wife quickly said that’s in the name of the Bridal Chorus, “Here comes the bride”, from Lohengrin by Richard Wagner, the German composer. Sure enough, there is a romantic grand opera, one of the finest many say, by Wagner, composed between 1846 and 1848, named Lohengrin. The time was in the 900’s during the reign of Henry the Fowler, King of Germany. It is a love story of Elsa, Duchess of Brabant and the mysterious knight Lohengrin. The knight Telramund had falsely accused Elsa of murdering her brother Gottfried. Lohengrin comes to king’s court clad in shining armor and borne on the river in a skiff drawn by a white swan. Lohengrin defeats Telramund and marries Elsa. In the meantime she has promised never to ask Lohengrin’s name and origin. But Telramund and his sorceress wife Ortrude persuade Elsa to break her vow. Before the court Lohengrin reveals that he is the son of King Parzival in Mountsalvat and has helped guard the Holy Grail [cup from which Jesus drank at the last supper]. By the law of his order, he must say farewell forever, but before he departs, the swan is transformed into the youth Gottfried. Ortrud’s wicked spell had changed the boy into a bird. As Lohengrin’s skiff disappears down the river, Elsa falls lifeless.


Hartwig Kantorowicz (reverse Z)	Litthauer Stomach Bitters	Lohengrin Bitters

Lohengrin Bitters probably came on the German market about the same time as the more common Litthauer Stomach Bitters / Invented 1864 By / Josef Loewenthal, Berlin embossed vertically on a milk glass case gin bottle, 9^1/2 inches tall. An industrial revolution began in Germany in the mid-1800’s which promoted the interests of a growing class of business men, and by the late 1800’s, Germany had become a great industrial nation, importing goods to other nations. The Tucker Hardy Co. of Chicago became the sole distributor of Lohengrin Bitters in this country, and S. Loewenthal Co., Josef’s son, of Cleveland, Ohio, became sole American manufacturer of Litthauer Stomach Bitters. The latter had also been manufactured by Hartwig, Kantorowicz of Berlin, Hamburg, Posen [Poland], Paris and New York. For some reason, Litthauer Bitters seemed to do much better than Lohengrin Bitters.
There’s another milk glass case gin bottle 10 inches tall, embossed vertically Fritz Reuter Bitters which is very rare. It’s probably from Germany also.
About thirty years ago, I was told by an antique dealer in Edna, Texas, about a farmer’s wife near there who had lined her flower beds with milk glass bitters bottles. However, there were none for sale in her shop, and I was given no additional information. Most likely they were labeled Litthauer Bitters embossed Hartwig Kantorowicz / Posen / Ham- / Burg / Ger- / Many. Mine has a backward Z.....

References:
1. Biancolli, L.: The Opera
Reader, 1953.
2. Ring, C. and Ham, W.C.:
Bitters Bottles 1998.

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