# Anyone here have some iridescent Benicia Mud Flats bottles?



## Plumbata (Feb 6, 2010)

I have been searching for images of the famed Benicia, CA bottles online for a while but have had little luck. I have seen a few in books or at shows but that was years ago and it would be awesome to refresh the ole' memory if some of you are willing to post pictures of the iridescent bottles you own or have access to.

 After reading RIbottleguy's post on bottles that shouldn't be cleaned it reminded me of an exquisite Lea & Perrins sauce bottle that looked like the Benicia mud flats material, that is, before my father accidentally broke it when I was about 11. It was the most beautiful bottle I have ever owned; absolutely saturated with the most complex interwoven spectrum of greens, purples, yellows, reds and blues i've had the pleasure of handling. It looked like a gem opal on crystal meth. I got it for a buck a short while before, and after it got knocked off my shelf I am pretty sure I shed a few silent tears. []  Dad said he would replace it, but alas, a similar piece has eluded us. I still have the shards, actually, but lord knows where they are.

 Anyway, post your iridescent bottles, or if there is a similar thread please link me. Myself and many others would probably appreciate it quite a bit!


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## Staunton Dan (Feb 6, 2010)

I always liked this one. It's a common Ely's but it had neat iridescent colors.


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## Plumbata (Feb 6, 2010)

Nice one Dan, thanks for posting! Sure is a bit nicer than the regular ones that come out, eh?


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## Dabeel (Feb 7, 2010)

Hey Stephen,
 Here's a whole shelf full of them. They aren't mine though[] A digger friend of mine collected these last year from a SF dump site.

 I collected a trio of bromos from the same dump site last october with the Benecia effect second picture attached.

 Doug


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## Dabeel (Feb 7, 2010)

Here are the piddly Bromos I found there


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## appliedlips (Feb 7, 2010)

Here's one that came out of a dry privy in Ohio. I have quite a few but this in the only one I can find a picture of. I love the bright reds in this one.


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## appliedlips (Feb 7, 2010)

another side


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## appliedlips (Feb 7, 2010)

last one, to clean it would be a crime.


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## Dabeel (Feb 7, 2010)

Oh man! that is a neat one Doug!.......very cool indeed!


 The other Doug[]


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## Plumbata (Feb 7, 2010)

Dabeel,

 Your friend has a beautiful shelf of bottles! I would kill to be able to dig local stuff that looks like that. The applied top strapside-looking amber flask just right of the middle, and the med behind it are incredible! The flask has a killer globby top on a crooked neck which only adds to the immense appeal. Damn those are attractive! The master ink is a gem too, as well as the yellowish-green Wakelee's pharm on the far right. So many colors you never see made by man! Your bromo finds look pretty good too, for being bromos. [] Was it a wet dumpsite? Remember what kind of soil was around the area?


 Doug,

 Aside from the swirly med behind the flask, your Hostetter's beats them all in terms of the range of color variation, and certainly has a monopoly on the red hues. I am glad that you mentioned that it was from a dry privy, which is interesting. Perhaps whatever water did pass through the area over time slowly leached out the chems necessary to create that effect? Was there ash in the pit, or other mineral or acid-bearing material? Can you remember which side was facing up when you found it (i may be asking a bit much, sorry). The iridescence on the hostetters certainly has a different nature than the SF bottles.


 I wonder if there is a way to chemically mimic such an effect? Is there i way to pepper a bottle with different metal oxides or salts and then bake it like carnival glass, or some other way to speed up the process? Perhaps I should talk to some local glassblowing potheads and inquire about their methods? I would imagine that the technique is not outside the abilities of most people given the proper resources.






 That doesn't mean that it would have the same feel, though. I am under the impression (and may well be wrong) that the naturally formed iridescence is caused by a film of hydrated silica (opal, essentially) with different levels of hydration in different spots with different degrees of natural chemical etching, thus varying the percieved color of the light reflected. Is there some way to chemically speed up the process so that a more natural-looking bottle can be formed? Perhaps treating it in hydrofluoroic acid for a few months to etch it and bring out the striations (like the med behind the flask in dabeel's photograph), then treat it with metallic salts and heat slowly? 

 Any insights?


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## cyberdigger (Feb 7, 2010)

It's always so humbling coming on here.. my clean bottles aren't clean enough, and my sick ones aren't sick enough...[&o]


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## surfaceone (Feb 7, 2010)

> ORIGINAL:  cyberdigger
> 
> It's always so humbling coming on here.. my clean bottles aren't clean enough, and my sick ones aren't sick enough...[&o]


 
 Truer words, sir...


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## Dabeel (Feb 8, 2010)

Hey Stephen,

 Thanks for the compliments. 
 To answer your question, the dumpsite finds are from one of the outlying dumps south of Downtown SF. You can't really dig these by hand as the dump has been filled over 15'-20'.

 What we did is go through the piles left by an excavator that was digging a deep pipeline that crossed through a midsection of the original dump. All the excavated piles had tons of rusted metal, bricks, and shoes within the normal range of San Franciscan soil such as silty sand with rocks. We didn't encounter much of what's known as Bay Mud....the smelly decomposed grey clay with shells. Every single bottle found had the irridescense (spelling?) that you like.

 Let us know if find synthetic ways of recreating that process. I like this post you started!

 Doug(Dabeel)


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## surfaceone (Feb 8, 2010)

Hello Doug,

 Your friend has quite a shelf of dazzlers there! Do you know if the device in the left foreground is a "duster," along the lines of this:  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




?

 I was surprised to note that Benicia was the sixth Capitol of California. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	









 A partial view of the mudflats, from here.

 I love opalescent glass. Thanks for putting up these beauties.


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## CALDIGR2 (Feb 8, 2010)

I have dug on the Benicia flats on and off, mostly off, since the late 1960s. I have been there once in the last 5 yrs. At one point I had a lot of different bottles that we pulled from the mud behind the tannery. The tannin from that facility made the most beautiful iridescence I have ever seen. One of my old diggin' buds has quite an extensive collection of them that our club displayed at the 2006 Reno National.


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## surfaceone (Feb 8, 2010)

> One of my old diggin' buds has quite an extensive collection of them that our club displayed at the 2006 Reno National.


 
 Hey Mike,

 Now, there's a picture I'd love to see. Any chance yer bud, or one of the 49ers, could send you a photo to put up?


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## KentOhio (Feb 17, 2010)

Here's my best one:


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## Lordbud (Feb 17, 2010)

Hey there's one of these J.J. Macks on the left side of your friends shelf o' sickness. [8D] Sick glass with some Benicia effect...hard to capture just right with a digital camera.


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## Mr Kitty (Apr 6, 2019)

*Benica Mud Flats pickle bottle*



plumbata said:


> i have been searching for images of the famed benicia, ca bottles online for a while but have had little luck. I have seen a few in books or at shows but that was years ago and it would be awesome to refresh the ole' memory if some of you are willing to post pictures of the iridescent bottles you own or have access to.
> 
> After reading ribottleguy's post on bottles that shouldn't be cleaned it reminded me of an exquisite lea & perrins sauce bottle that looked like the benicia mud flats material, that is, before my father accidentally broke it when i was about 11. It was the most beautiful bottle i have ever owned; absolutely saturated with the most complex interwoven spectrum of greens, purples, yellows, reds and blues i've had the pleasure of handling. It looked like a gem opal on crystal meth. I got it for a buck a short while before, and after it got knocked off my shelf i am pretty sure i shed a few silent tears. []  dad said he would replace it, but alas, a similar piece has eluded us. I still have the shards, actually, but lord knows where they are.
> 
> Anyway, post your iridescent bottles, or if there is a similar thread please link me. Myself and many others would probably appreciate it quite a bit!


This 11 inch Smith pickle was found at the Benica mud flats around 1960


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## Ken_Riser (Apr 19, 2019)

Mr Kitty said:


> This 11 inch Smith pickle was found at the Benica mud flats around 1960


Never see one those kinda different aren't they liquor or what they put in them look kinda religious  liquor wow kinda wierd looking hard tell what they put in them of you didn't already know look churchy kinda to 

Sent from my Moto E (4) using Tapatalk


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## sandchip (Apr 20, 2019)

Pickle all day long, Ken.

The irridescence aside, that is a beautiful mold that I've never seen before in a T.B. Smith, Mr. Kitty.  Absolutely gorgeous.  Is it pontiled?


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