# Wire bail and porcelain stoppers on crown-top bottles (?)



## bottle-o-pop (Nov 12, 2020)

I'm a collector of crown-top deco bottles and I have a question about them. I sometimes see for sale a deco crown-top bottle with a wire bail stopper. It just seems weird to me, so I wanted to ask - was soda sometimes sold by a bottler in a crown-top bottle with a wire bail stopper, or were the wire bail stoppers only put on somehow by soda customers after they started drinking from the bottle?


----------



## nhpharm (Nov 13, 2020)

They were often sold that way.


----------



## UncleBruce (Nov 13, 2020)

bottle-o-pop said:


> I'm a collector of crown-top deco bottles and I have a question about them. I sometimes see for sale a deco crown-top bottle with a wire bail stopper. It just seems weird to me, so I wanted to ask - was soda sometimes sold by a bottler in a crown-top bottle with a wire bail stopper, or were the wire bail stoppers only put on somehow by soda customers after they started drinking from the bottle?


I have never seen a DECO bottle with a wired closure, yet I have several embossed crown top beers that have wired on closures. These beers are older than the DECO era sodas.  On the sodas the crown cap would usually have indicated the flavor of the contents.  In my personal opinion I would be highly suspicious that a wired closure would have been added to ENHANCE the bottle and would not be original.  I have literally found thousands of deco era sodas and none ever had this type closure.  I do restoration on my old closures and in working with these they are easily installed and I have many new old stock closure mechanisms that could be put on bottles.  A good friend of mine in Davenport, Iowa can make the eccentrics and bails from scratch and they look perfect. 
Having typed all of this... who knows, maybe, but I would doubt the authenticity.
I shared this beer in a different forum.  It is a crown top with a wired closure.  It is pre 1920.


----------



## westKYdigger (Nov 13, 2020)

Can we see a picture of a Deco with a wired closure?


----------



## CanadianBottles (Nov 13, 2020)

I agree with Uncle Bruce, it was a common practice but I've never seen one on a deco bottle.  It's possible on the earliest decos from the 1910s or early 20s, after that I think the practice mostly died out.  I imagine finding a wire stopper on a quart deco soda would be more likely as well, one on a standard size bottle would really raise my suspicions.


----------



## greendirt330 (Nov 13, 2020)

There are some straight side Coca Cola bottles out there that are crown top with the wired porcelain stoppers , correct me if I’m wrong but I think they are called Lightning closures maybe ? The bottom of the crown part that attached to the neck has more of a flat area that protrudes slightly around the bottom for the wire closure to seat against . My understanding was they done this so the bottler could use whichever of the two that they preferred , crown or wired porcelain stopper.


----------



## bottle-o-pop (Nov 13, 2020)

I don't have any deco bottle with such a closure, or any closure, actually. I'd have to refer to someone's ebay item if I could find another one.


----------



## hemihampton (Nov 13, 2020)

You can't trust anything you see on ebay. To many Fakes on ebay & to many clueless people making Fakes. I think during Prohibition some of these wire lightning stoppers made a comeback being used mainly by the illegal self/home brewers. Just my opinion. I'm sure others will vary? LEON.


----------



## Sodasandbeers (Nov 18, 2020)

Actually, these bottles were often re-used for home bottling of Hires Root beer and unless the household had a crown capper, they would use the lightning and Hutter stoppers to seal the fermenting beverage.  I have seen this bottles in old dumps and houses in our area and they were not doctored, although I have seen many doctored bottles over the years also.


----------



## EvansBottles (Nov 18, 2020)

Sodasandbeers was the only one that got it right. Everything else is simply speculation.
The lightning stoppers were sold for that very purpose. And were sized to fit a crown top
rather than a blob top. Which require a longer top wire. Although some bottlers used them
early on when the switch to crown tops was made. There are even transitional crown tops
that have a longer lower part of the lip. This was to accommodate the blob top sized wire
bail.


----------



## epackage (Nov 18, 2020)

Art Deco sodas would be too late for that stopper but I assume someone decided to reuse a stopper from another bottle so the bottle could be used repeatedly. Unlike regular earlier crown tops, where merchants didn't want to get rid of all their porcelain stoppers and wire bails and invest in a crown top machine and boxes of crown tops. So they used their remaining stock of porcelain stoppers until they ran out and had to bite the bullet. I have stoneware bottles from the 1890's that have lightning stoppers on them because they could be reused over and over without have to add corks and tie them down...


----------



## nhpharm (Nov 18, 2020)

I've seen some quart decos with lightning stoppers.  I'm assuming it was because these allowed the bottles to be reclosed after use since you weren't likely to guzzle the entire bottle.


----------



## CanadianBottles (Nov 18, 2020)

This is an interesting footnote, there is at least one ACL crown top soda that's local to me which was always fitted with a lightning stopper from the bottler.  They aren't that old but I'm pretty sure they're from the ACL era, I'm guessing the 70s.


----------



## CanadianBottles (Nov 18, 2020)

nhpharm said:


> I've seen some quart decos with lightning stoppers.  I'm assuming it was because these allowed the bottles to be reclosed after use since you weren't likely to guzzle the entire bottle.



I'm curious, have you ever seen one with a stopper marked with the bottler's name?  I was thinking the quarts would be the most likely ones to have them, but like Evans says those could have been used by home brewers as well.


----------



## UncleBruce (Nov 18, 2020)

CanadianBottles said:


> This is an interesting footnote, there is at least one ACL crown top soda that's local to me which was always fitted with a lightning stopper from the bottler.  They aren't that old but I'm pretty sure they're from the ACL era, I'm guessing the 70s.
> 
> View attachment 214510
> View attachment 214511


This stopper reminds me of the GROLSCH beer bottles still is stores today.  Interesting.


----------



## SFBEER (Nov 18, 2020)

bottle-o-pop said:


> I'm a collector of crown-top deco bottles and I have a question about them. I sometimes see for sale a deco crown-top bottle with a wire bail stopper. It just seems weird to me, so I wanted to ask - was soda sometimes sold by a bottler in a crown-top bottle with a wire bail stopper, or were the wire bail stoppers only put on somehow by soda customers after they started drinking from the bottle?



I am a collector of San Francisco brewery memorabilia.  Some of the bottles come with both crown and blob variant tops.  The history of closures is therefore of interest to me.  I also have a library of books relating to the brewing and beer bottling industries.  One of my books is from an Eastern Convention that took place in 1892.  On the rear cover is an ad for crown stoppers for bottles, circa 1892.  I was surprised they were available that early and did a little research on William Painter of Baltimore, the inventor.  Seems breweries and bottlers experimented with the closure as early as the 1890's.  Some of the crown closure bottles are actually older than the blobs! The transition to all crowns for beer bottles took place around 1906 though export beers were corked. (Patent or lightning stoppers were made to use on bottles for local use while beers that were shipped were corked.)  Ads appeared in theatre programs around 1906 showing how to open the crown bottles.  I have postcards used to order beer from around 1908 and you could specify either crown stoppers or patent stoppers.  I imagine the patent stoppers (Hutter porcelain vs. the all-metal lightning) were applied to the crown bottles.  I have plenty of examples of this.  The deco sodas are far too late to have had original patent stoppers.  I like the theory that they were placed by a basement root beer bottler using the deco sodas and refilling them.  Thomas Jacobs  drjacobs@sbcglobal.net


----------



## hemihampton (Nov 18, 2020)

EvansBottles said:


> Sodasandbeers was the only one that got it right. Everything else is simply speculation.
> The lightning stoppers were sold for that very purpose. And were sized to fit a crown top
> rather than a blob top. Which require a longer top wire. Although some bottlers used them
> early on when the switch to crown tops was made. There are even transitional crown tops
> ...




That's about the same thing I said except I said Beer instead Root Beer?


----------



## hemihampton (Nov 18, 2020)

SFBEER said:


> I am a collector of San Francisco brewery memorabilia.  Some of the bottles come with both crown and blob variant tops.  The history of closures is therefore of interest to me.  I also have a library of books relating to the brewing and beer bottling industries.  One of my books is from an Eastern Convention that took place in 1892.  On the rear cover is an ad for crown stoppers for bottles, circa 1892.  I was surprised they were available that early and did a little research on William Painter of Baltimore, the inventor.  Seems breweries and bottlers experimented with the closure as early as the 1890's.  Some of the crown closure bottles are actually older than the blobs! The transition to all crowns for beer bottles took place around 1906 though export beers were corked. (Patent or lightning stoppers were made to use on bottles for local use while beers that were shipped were corked.)  Ads appeared in theatre programs around 1906 showing how to open the crown bottles.  I have postcards used to order beer from around 1908 and you could specify either crown stoppers or patent stoppers.  I imagine the patent stoppers (Hutter porcelain vs. the all-metal lightning) were applied to the crown bottles.  I have plenty of examples of this.  The deco sodas are far too late to have had original patent stoppers.  I like the theory that they were placed by a basement root beer bottler using the deco sodas and refilling them.  Thomas Jacobs  drjacobs@sbcglobal.net




SFBEER, You should read up on this post about Crown Tops. 





__





						EARLIEST "CROWN TOP" SODA BOTTLES 1892 - 1900
					

I call this Part II of my continuing interest in early soda pop bottles. However, this time I would like to focus on the early-early crown tops from around 1892 through about 1900. I am primarily interested in American made bottles, but all are welcome to post any crown soda bottle from any part...



					www.antique-bottles.net


----------



## M.C.Glass (Nov 30, 2020)

I have one quart slugplate Feigenson with a bail top I've often wondered about. I has the age, and there are no scrape or twist marks in the patina on the wires. It could have been/probably was added by a consumer afterward who wanted to use the bottle over and over. 
But looking closer, I notice all these slug bottles I have from Feigenson seem to have a sharp edge on the bottom of the crown top, like they were made to accommodate the wire?


----------

