# Turlingtons balsam seal



## deepbluedigger (Jan 21, 2010)

Picked this up recently. A seal for Turlingtons Balsam, probably for marking wax seals on correspondence, or on packets / boxes of bottles. It's just under an inch across so possibly (?) too large for the wax seals on the tops of the bottles. It turned up in a box of miscellaneous junk in the north of England. Difficult to date: could be any time from mid 18th century to mid 19th.

 A great go-with for the early medicines.


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## deepbluedigger (Jan 21, 2010)

The whole thing


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## deepbluedigger (Jan 21, 2010)

Reversed image to clearly show what the seal says


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## epackage (Jan 21, 2010)

Very cool "Go With"...Jim


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## baltbottles (Jan 21, 2010)

That has got to be one o fthe collest go withs I have ever seen.

 Chris


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## RedGinger (Jan 21, 2010)

I love that!  I am still on the lookout for a Turlington's bottle.  They have such a cool history and to have that seal is a great part of the story.


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## surfaceone (Jan 21, 2010)

Hello jerry,

 That is a great find! Infinitely more rare than the legions of glass Turlingtons, I should imagine. When does the "Go with" eclipse the original piece? I think we just saw a demonstration...


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## deepbluedigger (Jan 22, 2010)

Thanks for the great comments! I'm still amazed that I managed to get this.

 BTW - a correction about where the seller found it. He emailed me today to say that it was in a piece of furniture (desk or cupboard, probably) that he bought from a house clearance / estate sale somewhere in Wales over 30 years ago, but he can't remember exactly where. It's been rolling around in his office desk drawer ever since and only came up for sale because he decided it was time for a bit of a clear out.


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## sandchip (Jan 22, 2010)

Probably a dumb question, but is it for embossing a seal on paper, or a wax seal for maybe an envelope, or applying a glass seal on a bottle?  Doesn't appear to have been subjected to the rigors of a glass house environment, but I had to ask.  Dumb mind wanna know!


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## deepbluedigger (Jan 22, 2010)

There's a thought: glass sealed Turlington bottles!

 But this one is for wax seals on letters and packages, or (possibly) for the wax seal on the top of the earlier medicine bottles.

 But the earliest Daffy's Elixir bottles, dating to the 1670s or thereabouts, are believed to have been small size shaft-and-globe bottles and there has been the suggestion that at least some of them had glass seals. Would have to be the ultimate British patent medicine bottle,  if they exist.


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## GuntherHess (Jan 22, 2010)

That seal was never exposed to molten glass temperatures.
 My first thought was the wax seals on the top of early corked bottles. I had a bottle sealed with something like that on top of the cork. Like you said though it may be too big.
 It may be just a wax document seal.


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## RedGinger (Jan 22, 2010)

If it was not debossed (is that the correct word for this?), I would say they could have used it to make the label.  Did Turlington's even come labeled?  Deepblue, that is a neat story of how you acquired the seal.


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## deepbluedigger (Jan 23, 2010)

It arrived here today. Turns out it is smaller than I thought: photo shows it with a flint pontilled bottle, and it's smaller than the diameter of the lip, so it could have been used for the seals over corks.


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## deepbluedigger (Jan 23, 2010)

... and check out the workmanship. An impression made in putty.


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## GuntherHess (Jan 23, 2010)

I would say that is a cork wax seal for bottles. its the right size and looks similar to the seals on other period medicines I have seen.  Nice rare find.


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## cobaltbot (Jan 23, 2010)

That is just one incredible find!  Congratulations!


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## Penn Digger (Jan 23, 2010)

Nice find.  Sweet!


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## JustGlass (Jan 24, 2010)

Thats a nice find what ever it was used for. Being a owner and lover of turlington balsom bottles anything to do with their historic past is always going to be a great find. I heard the first bottles produced were unembossed. Did the first bottles  have the same shape as the turlington bottles that have been produced through out the years?


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## deepbluedigger (Jan 25, 2010)

JG, the standard shape Turlington bottle (in your photo and mine on this thread) was the 4th and final type that Turlington used. 

 The medicine first received a patent in 1744. The bottles used were:

 1. c. 1744 to 1748. Type unknown. Probably a standard cylindrical or rectangular bottle. No known examples (apparently). Possibly because the bottle was unembossed.
 2. c. 1748 - 1752. Short tapered, cross section 'oval with cropped sides'. Embossed on all 4 sides. One with the date 1748, one with the usual 'Kings patent' etc embossing, one with a coat of arms (same as in the seal above), one with 'London'. Two museum examples known, both damaged. Rumours of several more in collections on both sides of the Atlantic. There's one shown at http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/ceramics/pages/object.asp?obj_id=471595
 3. c. 1752 - 1754. 'Fiddle' shaped bottle. Embossing very similar to number 2. Several in museums and a few in private collections. There's one shown at http://www.stenton.org/research/excavations.cfm.
 4. c. 1744 - 1900. The 'normal' type. Hundreds of British and American variations.


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## deepbluedigger (Jan 25, 2010)

That link for the type 3 bottle doesn't work. Hopefully this one will:

 http://www.stenton.org/research/Ins_Outs_StentColl.cfm


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## JustGlass (Jan 26, 2010)

Great Information. Ive read alot about the history but never really saw how the shape of the bottle evolved over the years.  It would be neat to turn over a shovel full of dirt and see one of the older style ones.


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## deepbluedigger (Jan 27, 2010)

> ORIGINAL:  JustGlass
> It would be neat to turn over a shovel full of dirt and see one of the older style ones.


 
 'Neat' is a bit of an understatement.


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## deepbluedigger (Feb 16, 2010)

I reckon I'll just use this thread whenever I have something added to my collection that might be interesting to folks on this forum.

 This is an advertising pamphlet from 1775 that I was lucky enough to buy for a pretty reasonable price a week or two ago. It's for Dr Norris's Drops for Fevers, which as first sold around 1770, and was quite successful in the UK for 80 or 90 years. Bottles turn up in 2 sizes and with three or four different styles of embossing. All are flint glass and pontilled.


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## deepbluedigger (Feb 16, 2010)

... and this is a Norris's bottle, to show what they're like. This one has embossing of a proprietors name that dates it to roughly 1813 - 1820.


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