# RIGO Poison Bottles - The Historical Truth and the Owl Drug Collectors Blog



## mctaggart67

Hello Everyone:

 First off, I'm sorry to bring David Levine's Owl Drug Collectors blog back to the fore on this site, but I believe it's necessary to offer an alternative to Levine's most recent posting, in which he plays loose with the historical facts to impugn the character of Ebay seller clancy_kid. Since Mr. Levine has a habit of editing his posts to suit his purposes as events unfold, for the record I've cut-and-pasted the very words of Levine's latest missive as follows:

 http://owldrugcollectors.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/false-and-misrepresentation-ebay/

 FALSE AND MISREPRESENTATION / EBAY

 January 29, 2013

 The second of these announcements deals with the subject of the misrepresentation on Ebay.  Several years the blog discussed an item on Ebay the so-called Canadian â€œRigoâ€ Owl Drug connection.  At that time the seller on Ebay misrepresented the item as an Owl Drug item connected to the Owl Drug Company of San Francisco.  In the blog discussion of this bottle it was determined that the bottle was not associated with the Owl Drug Company of San Francisco, was not produced by the Richards Glass company â€œRigoâ€ in Canada but was instead produced in China.  The label that appeared on the bottle was not an antique label but according to the manufacturerâ€™s representative the label was a new label produced overseas and glued to the bottle with modern glue.

 Today the Clancy kid has a similar bottle on sale on Ebay.  This bottle is not produced by the Richards Glass Company (RIGO) nor is the label an authentic Owl Drug label. If, in fact, this bottle or an identical one was determined the last time it appeared on Ebay to be a total misrepresentation, then why would the seller put this same type of bottle up for sale?  Did he believe that people would not see the falsehood and forget what was done before?  Is he deliberately trying to mislead any buyer again just for the purpose of monetary gain?  Buyer beware â€“donâ€™t be fooled just because he has an Ebay store and a lot of feedbacks.  It is obvious that despite the fact that the seller has been involved in bottle collecting for over 40 years, he has not learned a thing about the Owl Drug Company of San Francisco or other Canadian bottles.  Does he thinks that by putting a so-called Canadian bottle with a false Owl Drug label on the bottle will get his item sold?  Or does he even care?

 ---------------------------------

 Mr. Levine also includes three bottle pictures that the clancy_kid has posted with the ebay listing in question. Below is one of the three pictures:


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## mctaggart67

Okay, now here's the link to clancy_kid's ebay listing:

 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Deep-COBALT-BLUE-Canadian-OWL-DRUG-Co-Rigo-POISON-bottle-w-label-KI-7-/370744227583?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item565213f6ff

 Now, I wish to declare that I, in no way, have any financial interest in defending clancy_kid. In fact, I've never had any dealings with him, though by his feedback record, he is clearly a reputable seller. The following postings include images of historical sources to refute David Levine's contentions about RIGO poison bottles. I would have preferred to have saved their secondary publication for a bottle book I'm working on, but I feel it's too important not to offer an evidentiary alternative to Levine's unhelpful diatribes. Naturally, of course, I hope all bottle collectors learn from and enjoy the research results which appear in the next postings.


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## mctaggart67

We'll begin with some quick historical details behind the Richards Glass Company of Toronto:

 1) incorporated in 1912 by James Richards, formerly a commercial traveller (salesman) with Toronto's Beaver Flint Glass Company -- as a commercial traveller for Beaver Flint, Richards would have had his hand on the pulse of what glass products were needed by Canadian druggists at the time, and Richards would have put this knowledge to good use running his own company

 2) Richards Glass did not make its own bottles, rather the company was a wholesale jobber for acutally bottle manufacturers, chiefly Canada's Dominion Glass Company; however, Richard Glass seems to have designed some of the bottles it sold

 3) Richards Glass Company, from its inception onwards, used the trade name RIGO, an acronym of the first letters in the first three words of the company's name

 4) Richards Glass dominated the market for embossed prescription and poison bottles during the 1910s and beyond

 5) Richard Glass is still in business today


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## mctaggart67

Now for direct information about RIGO poison bottles:

 Around the time Richards Glass was formed, the Ontario College of Pharmacy had formalized the regulation that druggists in the province had to put up certain poisonous compounds in specially marked bottles. Before that poisons only had to be labelled as such. Nevertheless, Richards Glass capitalized on the new legal requirement for specially designed poison bottles and by early 1914 had introduced the RIGO line of poison bottles. Below is an article from the April 1914 issue of The Retail Druggist of Canada puffing the introduction of RIGO poison bottles. Note the illustration. It is for the same type of bottle in clancy_kid's Ebay listing and for pictures of RIGO bottles I've posted elsewhere on this forum.


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## mctaggart67

Whoops, forgot to mention in the posting immediate above that the other two illustrations in the news article depict a bottle that closely resemble the Lewis and Towers English poison bottle. The Beaver Flint Glass Company produced its own bottles based on the Lewis and Towers design during the early 1900s. Richards either cribbed the design from Beaver or had permission to do so. My guess -- an it's just a guess at this point -- is that Richards had permission, since it appears that there was some sort of tri-partite networking amongst Dominion, Beaver and Richards. Anyhow, the RIGO poisons are a distinct generation of Canadian poison bottle, with an ancestral "basic-style" pedigree.


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## mctaggart67

RIGO poisons were clearly a hit with druggists under the new poison bottle regulations in Ontario. By 1915, these poison bottles were a regular part of the overall RIGO line. Although Richards Glass focussed upon Canada's most populous market of the provinces of Quebec (explains the French on the bottles) and Ontario, the company also marketed its RIGO poisons across Canada, including British Columbia, home of the Owl Drug Company of Victoria and Vancouver. Below is an advertisement for the entire RIGO line which appeared in several 1915 issues of The Retail Druggist of Canada. I've highlighted in a red box the listing for RIGO poison bottles:


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## mctaggart67

There's one other important point about RIGO poisons. Although Richard Glass marketed them, Dominion Glass, as previously mentioned, made them at whatever glass house was given the responsibility of maintaining a cobalt tank. As far as I know, most cobalt production was at Wallaceburg, but Hamilton and Montreal also had cobalt tanks from time to time.

 So, there you have it, a brief historical backgrounder on RIGO poison bottles. These bottles are Canadian-made, period. China does not come into play at all, even in the realm of reproductions (there are none of RIGOs). I know Mr. Levine once wrote that RIGO poisons were never made by Richards Glass and that he asserted this because someone at the modern Richards Glass informed him that Richards Glass did not make cobalt poison bottles. This modern statement is historically erroneous, given the documentary record about RIGO poison bottles. However, it's unfair to fault an employee today for not being up on historical facts. On the other hand, those who present themselves as historians should know better.


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## cowseatmaize

Good info, thanks. I don't collect them but I'm always wanting to learn something new.


> though by his feedback record, he is clearly a reputable seller.


As for cancy kid, or as I call him the nuking kid, I'm not crazy about him. He notes the process but buries it way down in fine print.
 I wonder if the owl/RIGO would turn pea soup puke green?


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## deenodean

Great info , well written!!


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## jerry2143

If you have any doubts if clancy_kid knows about OWL DRUG bottles just go to his ME section under his ebay name. Go down to the section entitled TROUT FISHING LEADS TOO OLD OWL BOTTLES. Look in the second paragraph of this section and he tells you he has had A LIFE LONG DESIRE FOR OWL DRUG bottles and is looking for them. You be the judge if he shoud know about the RIGO poison bottle with the owl drug label on it.i


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## mctaggart67

I think you've misread my postings. I'm not questioning clancy_kid at all.


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## andy volkerts

> ORIGINAL:  mctaggart67
> 
> RIGO poisons were clearly a hit with druggists under the new poison bottle regulations in Ontario. By 1915, these poison bottles were a regular part of the overall RIGO line. Although Richards Glass focussed upon Canada's most populous market of the provinces of Quebec (explains the French on the bottles) and Ontario, the company also marketed its RIGO poisons across Canada, including British Columbia, home of the Owl Drug Company of Victoria and Vancouver. Below is an advertisement for the entire RIGO line which appeared in several 1915 issues of The Retail Druggist of Canada. I've highlighted in a red box the listing for RIGO poison bottles:


 Send the above Rigo ad to mr Levine and maybe he will have second thouts about his rantings about the Clancy_kid


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## mctaggart67

Hi Andy (and everyone else):

 I didnâ€™t send Mr. Levine a copy of the historical document. However, Levine has clearly sifted through my postings above because he emailed me a critique of the same. Below Iâ€™ve copied most of Levineâ€™s email response to me. I say most because some of his response libels another party and I want no part in that sort of nastiness. Iâ€™ve taken the liberty of adding my own additions and comments to Levineâ€™s critique. These appear in square brackets mostly after each of Levineâ€™s topical sections, which I have also taken the liberty of organizing.

 David Levine to me on January 30, 2013 in response to my posting of this thread on Canadian RIGO poison bottles:

 â€œGlen: Do you think I would put comments on a worldwide blog *[Levineâ€™s Owl collectors blog] * that have not been researched and documented by the authorities associated with the item itself and others? This is not how I work. *[Levine is fallaciously arguing by authority here]* . . .

 â€œThe item that this seller has put on Ebay is not authentic and has been determined to be a fake or knockoff from China!! It is the same or similar to the bottle he put up for sale a year or 2 years ago. At that time I posted a blog discussing the item showing that it was not produced by the Richards Glass Company but was a knockoff from China. *[the bottle is not a knock-off from China â€“ itâ€™s genuine and belongs to the family of RIGO poisons discussed above]* . . .

 â€œThe label was not authentic either. It was a modern label that was created and placed on the bottle using "modern glue" as documented also by the Richards Glass Company and others. The label itself is not an Owl Drug Company of San Francisco label. They never used red as a color in their labels. *[the labels are also genuine and came from a hoard of labels and other materials that were located in Vancouver, British Columbiaâ€™s original Owl Drug Store building around twenty years ago (I once posted to Levineâ€™s blog about this, but he removed my contribution â€“ the modern Richards Glass Company (Richards Packaging) has never documented the use of these labels on bottles in produced one hundred years ago because they simply do not have an archives from which to conduct such research nor does it fall within their corporate mandate as a bottle and glass manufacturer and distributor]* . . .

 â€œThis information about this bottle and the other ones of this type put on Ebay by this seller was given to me by the owner and a bottle specialist at the Richard Glass Company, the Archives of Vancouver British Columbia, and others sources. *[Richards Glassâ€™s current owner is a bottle specialist, but a specialist as it relates to the modern bottle business and he is not a serious collector and he certainly is not a researcher of antique bottles, even those once manufactured/distributed by his company, so he surely could not have provided Levine with accurate information about RIGO poison bottles from the early 1900s â€“ the Vancouver Archives does not have any information about Richards Glass, a Toronto, Ontario based company, and the archives only provided Levine information about the officers, locations, etc. concerning the Vancouver Owl Drug Company stores]* . . .

 â€œI strongly suggest that you check with the Richard Glass Company directly as well as learn about knockoffs as they relate to Canadian bottles and other products in Canada. Suggest you contact your national government to check on what knockoffs have been introduced into Canada over the years particularly in the category of collectibles/glass/bottles/insulators and other items or products. *[this hints at Levineâ€™s fallacious conflation of what Richards Glass has told him about the current state of the glass industry with respect to knock-offs from China; it would appear that Levine thinks what happens today must have happened one hundred years ago â€“ the Canadian government only concerns itself with modern-day trademark and design piracy in China for those goods which play a significant role in todayâ€™s Canadian economy; the Chinese are not producing reproductions of RIGO poisons, though I suspect that if they were to identify a Canadian glass antique to fake it would be the quintessentially Canadian Beaver Jar, which would enjoy a much bigger market than RIGO poisons]* . . .

 â€œI will be happy to discuss these issues with you once you have done your research particularly with the Richards Glass Company and not just journals *[again, another false assumption about my research practices â€“ as to â€œjust journals,â€ these are the authentic historical documents I have consulted (some which have been copied above) as per my training as an historian (I hold a BA and MA in Canadian history and started a PhD but had to withdraw for financial reasons); strangely enough, Levine always knocks others for supposedly not undertaking proper archival research, yet when presented with the findings of proper archival research which refute his spurious claims, he dismisses such findings as being based on â€œjust journalsâ€ without confirmation from another authority, even if that authorityâ€™s knowledge is incomplete and therefore flawed, as is the case with the modern Richards Glass Company â€“ if Levine were trained in proper historical research methods he would understand this and he would understand that many historical documents offer us in the present solid evidence about the past that stands on its own merits without requiring confirmation]* . . .

 â€œAs a business owner I have to deal with this problem and issue of knockoffs everyday. Both our governments fail to deal with this issue and just sweep it under the table. Today the Richards Glass Company contracts with other glass manufacturers, particularly in China, to produce their glass products, but tend to produce more plastic bottles instead of glass for cost effectiveness and profitability. *[again, more conflation of the present industrial trade situation with the past]* . . .

 â€œI resent you*[r]* comments *[the ones made in my original postings in this thread]* without you doing your homework or understand*[ing]* the complexity of this problem especially since I have done my research and documented the problems about this item and this seller. Before you speak and write your comments, you should verify your own information based on the authorities and not just on journal articles as well as broadening your knowledge about fakes and knockoffs. Your criticism is welcome when warranted, but in this case you are way off base and have not a clue about what you speak about. *[again, more argumentation by authority and more fallacious reasoning, to which are added some childish personal insults]*â€

 I feel obligated to post all of this because I find Levineâ€™s tactics so distasteful and, frankly, counterproductive in our great hobby. His manner is even counterproductive to his stated goals, but he simply fails to see that. I think his calumny should, on occasion, be directly answered, refuted and neutralized. My gut feeling is that Levine wants to be an expert in our hobby â€“ and fair enough â€“ but, in an immense ego-play, he deems himself as being the only expert, with nobody else being capable of contributing knowledge and understanding. One only has to read his Owl blog to see this. He maliciously bashes so many, including those long since gone to their eternal reward and current volunteers in various bottle organizations who are trying their best to make things better for so many, and he edits out any criticism, no matter how constructive, of his ideas and opinions. Thatâ€™s too bad, because he might find that the bottle collecting world is so much more fun and interesting when one collaborates with others. Isnâ€™t that what hobbies are really about, the people?


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## andy volkerts

[8D] Hello Glen, I gave up on Mr Levine, he doesnt pass on to his site everything a person posts so things get taken out of context. I do not know what his grudge with the bottle hobby is, but hes not doing anybody any favors withhis one sided views. I have met Fredinand Meyer who is the present Pres. of the Historical Bottle Assn, and you couldnt ask for a better person or more knowledgful person on most bottle subjects, and he hasnt been into the hobby all that long. Mr Levine is quite disrepectful of a lot of people in our hobby who are really quite nice and helpful to collectors. I feel that the best way to deal with this wet blanket is to just ignore him.........


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## Bixel

Am I reading in to this wrong, or is Mr.Levine saying that RIGO never produced cobalt blue poisons, and that the RIGO cobalt coffin poisons I see are repro's from China...?


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## mctaggart67

Hi Kyle: It's not always easy to pin down what Levine is saying because of his lapses in logic, inconsistent historical research, and conflation of past and present events, but he seems to be saying that the RIGO bottle, with the Vancouver/Victoria, B.C. Owl Drug Co. label, listed on Ebay is a Chinese repro, despite uncontestable historical evidence of this type of bottle's manufacture in Canada around 100 years ago. One would think that the market would be flooded with RIGO poisons if the Chinese reproduced them because they don't undertake repros on a small scale. Regards, Glen


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## Poison_Us

Interesting read.  I have never followed Levine...so I dont know of his history.  But reading what you have listed what he has posted would have definitely made me question his comments.  Thanks for the info and insight.


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## epackage

Interesting stuff, I remember a discussion about this guy and him removing posts on his blog that don't support his views, a real toolbag of a guy if you ask me. To bad he doesn't haven't a Paterson blog, i'd love to butt heads with this guy...[]


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