Blogging About Warner’s Safe Cures

I decided to start this blog because I have thoroughly enjoyed collection Warner’s Safe Cures and because there is such a rich history that surrounds them.  I have often thought about writing an article for Antique Bottle & Glass Collector, but the thought of sitting down and compiling a long article was more than wanted to get involved in. The great thing about the blog, is that I can do short articles with pictures and publish them almost instantly. I really hope that this blog will become a resource for others who are interested in these cures and the Warner history.

More importantly, I hope that those of you who stop by for a visit will take the time to ask questions about Warner bottles or history or suggest possible topics for future entries. I won’t claim to have all the answers, but I am in touch with other Warner’s collectors and am happy to pass along questions that I cannot answer. I would also value photos of unique of unusual Warner bottles or advertising items.  Please help me make this a vibrant and informative blog.

Hooked on Warner’s

In case you’re asking, “Who is this guy and where did he come up with this idea for a blog?”, let me introduce myself. My name is Steve Jackson and I have been collecting Warner’s Safe Cures for over 30 years. My interest in collecting Warner’s can be traced back to the first time I laid eyes on a book published by Mike Seeliger called “H. H. Warner: His Company & His Bottles” (1974). At the time, I was a member of the Richmond Area Bottle Collectors Association in Richmond, Virginia. I had just recently taken up bottle collecting and was trying to find an area of specialization.

At one of the RABCA meetings, I picked up a copy of Mike’s book and the rest was history. Although Mike’s book was not the first to include Warner’s Safe bottles, he was the first to devote an entire book to them. The book was simple with line drawings of the bottles, rather than photographs. If you have seen a copy of this book (which is now out of print), you know what I mean. I had seen the ubiquitous Warner’s Safe Kidney & Liver Cure, but had no idea that so many other variations existed including those from exotic places like Pressburg, Frankfurt, London, Melbourne and Dundein. Although funds were scarce (as I was a teenager at the time), I decided to collect as many of the variants in Mike’s book as possible and have been doing so ever since. Because there was no Internet or World Wide Web (Al Gore hadn’t invented it yet), I actually had to write to collectors who had foreign Warner’s for sale.

In the years since then, I have developed a pretty good base of knowledge about the various types of Warner’s, although I am always amazed that I learn something new all the time. I’d say I’m hooked for life.

Welcome!

For some time, I have been thinking that it would fun to set up a blog specifically dedicated to those folks with an interest in Warner’s Safe Cures and all of the history associated with the empire created by Hulbert Harrington Warner in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. To say that he was a marketing genius is to engage in significant understatement. Without getting too much into his history (which I will leave for future posts), Warner took a relatively unheard of patent medicine company and grew it into a global company with offices and distribution facilities on at least three continents. Although he was a victim of his own hubris and, perhaps, greed, which ultimately cost him his company and his fortune, his legacy is that of one of the kings of patent medicine.

Apart from my own interest in Warner and his empire, I hope this blog will inspire other collectors and help answers questions about these wonderful bottles. I also want to give credit to a friend who started a Warner’s Safe web page back in the late 1990′s. Mark started a website devoted to Warner’s bottles. Unfortunately, Mark got out of collecting, but fragments of his old site still exist in cyberspace. Click on http://members.aol.com/hhwarner/.

Many of the pictures I will be posting are those taken of my own collection. However, I have also saved images from other sources because I thought they were particularly good. If I use an image that belongs to you, please let me know and I will either take it down or give you proper credit. Thanks and enjoy!