Bottled History

All it took was a few 1950s soda bottles to pique Brian Gray’s interest.

In the seventh grade, he discovered them at a friend’s house in Brimfield.

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“I was out there in the woods with (my friend), and we stumbled upon this dump with old bottles in it,” Gray says. “And it was kind of like finding buried treasure. I thought it was neat how something could sit there for 50 years and be left alone.”

Gray, freshman fine arts major, says from that point on he had collected bottles. His collection has grown to include about 800 to 1,000 antique glass bottles of varying types, sizes and colors.

The bottles are cylindrical, rectangular, shaped like onions, cones and pyramids. Gray also has a bottle shaped like a Victorian boot, one shaped like a log cabin and one shaped like a coffin.

“I have medicine bottles, some ink bottles, sodas, mineral waters, flasks and some whiskey bottles,” he says.

Medicine bottles are his favorite because of their outrageous claims.

“I have a bottle called ‘Cure for Asthma.’ They don’t even have a cure for that now.”

The words “electric” and “magnetic” were coined in the 1850s, he says.

“Doctors used those words as something brand-new and original, and they would call their products ‘electric’ this or ‘magnetic’ that and claim that it could cure just about anything,” he says.

“It’s like finding a puzzle piece, and then looking back at the history and solving the puzzle.”

One of his favorites, he says, is a Ravenna Glassworks bottle made in Ravenna.

“It would have been used for storing whiskey,” he says. “People would have gone to the tavern and had it refilled.”

Over the years, Gray has become well-versed bottle history.

“Bottles have an interesting history because they were blown at one place, and then shipped to another place to fill,” he says. “It’s like finding a puzzle piece, and then looking back at the history and solving the puzzle.”

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