Warner’s Safe Cure: Safe Nervine Banner

Warner's Safe Nervine Banner

Over the years, I have seen plenty of examples of Warner’s Safe advertising. Most of it was designed to instill brand loyalty and to help the 19th Century consumer associate the safety and security of an iron safe with the protection of a line of patent medicines.  Apparently, retailers of Warner’s Safe Remedies were encouraged to extend the branding into their establishments. Presumably, this  extension took the form of display advertising not unlike the displays that manufacturers use today to attract customers. Perhaps one of the best examples of this type of display advertising was the canvas banner. These banners heralded  the product, along with a concise statement of its benefits. One such example is the above banner of Warner’s Safe Nervine, Safe Pills and Safe Kidney & Liver Cure.

We don’t know much about this particular sign, except that it may have come from Northeastern Massachusetts, where it was auctioned. The very bottom of the sign bears the words “Murphy, Pine St., Jersey City.” We must assume that Murphy was the  producer of the sign, but that does not help much. Special thanks to Tom at Walnutt Antiques for use of his pictures. If you can shed any light on the unique piece of advertising or on “Murphy,” please let me know.

Warner’s Safe Cure: Marvelous Melbourne!

 

 

Warner's Safe Nervine Half Pint in Green from Melbourne

Just in case you were asleep this past week, a nice little gem of a Warner’s Safe Cure came up for bid on eBay. A half pint Nervine from Melbourne in GREEN. Now, mind you, a half pint Nervine from Melbourne is considered a rare Warner’s in and of itself a rare bottle. A half pint Nervine in green is…….well…….something more than rare.

In my experience, I have seen a few Safe Cures from Melbourne with a greenish tint, but they were all of the H. H. Warner & Co. Ltd. variety and are the later Melbourne bottles. This bottle was the full blown early Melbourne variety with the traditional safe image embossed on it. It is generally believed that these bottles were not made in Australia, but rather made in the United States or England and shipped there. The fact that this is green would suggest that it came from England. As you can see from the pictures, this is not a bottle with a green tint or green if you hold it a certain way under the light. This bottle is just plain green. Not sure who was the high bidder, but they paid just shy of $2500 for it. Which, considering the rarity of this bottle, is a steal.

I would invite my friends from downunder, including Wayne, to weigh in on how rare this bottle is. Interestingly, the seller was not from Australia, but rather from Germany. I emailed the seller in Leipsig and he kindly told me the story of this bottle. It seems that the local soccer (football for you non-Americans) team needed a new practice field and, it just so happened, that the field was on top of a pre-1900′s dump. There were apparently bottles lying around for the taking. This particular Warner’s Safe Nervine was buried up to its neck when the seller saw it. As it turned out, it was undamaged. I wish I had that kind of luck.  For my part, I think it may be time to add another bottle to my “A” List.  Congratulations to the seller and to the high bidder on this nice Warner’s gem….I’m GREEN with envy.

Warner’s Safe Cure: Artist’s Album (1888) – Part II

The Artist’s Album features some terrific graphics of both the Warner product line and its spurious claims. It is perhaps appropriate to start at the beginning with Safe Cure. It harkens back to the business that made Warner his first millions, the fireproof safe business. He modestly proclaims that he was “formerly the largest Safe dealer in the world” and provides the reader with a list of his available products.

Warner then moves on to another one of his original line of cures, his Diabetes Cure.  He distinguishes the two types of diabetes, insipid and sweet and notes the symtoms. However, he noted that the Diabetes Cure should not be used for kidney ailments, use only Safe Cure.

Next was the Rheumatic Cure, which also was supposed to be taken in concert with Safe Cure and Safe Pills. The claim promises that the “most obstinate rheumatic disorders disappear” if the treatment is maintained long enough to produce effects. I am not sure how long, “long enough” is, but I would venture a guess that it is more than one bottle. It is also worth noting that one of the testimonials accompanying this portion of the Album is from Mrs. Carrie D. T. Swift of East Avenue in Rochester.  One might surmise that she was the wife of Warner’s chief astronomer, Lewis Swift. Nothing like a little family support.

The next featured standard cure was the Nervine, which Warner sold to those whose nerves were too frayed to produce a good night’s sleep.

This represents the first portion of the Artist’s Album and the bulk of Warner’s original line of cures. The remainder of the Album deals with other Warner remedies including his Log Cabin Remedies and his Tippecanoe Bitters. I will feature the remaining portions in a future post. Thanks again to Jon Moran for the images.

Warner’s Safe Cure: Artist’s Album (1888) – Part I

If you have been following this blog for even a short amount of time, you have undoubtedly come to the conclusion that collecting Warner’s Safe Cures extends beyond just the bottles. Warners collectors are blessed with an enormous array of advertising paper and other ephemera produced by one of the great proprietary medicine companies of  the late 19th and early 20th centuries. H. H. Warner missed few, if any, opportunities to plaster the reading public with his brand, whether by almanacs, newspaper ads, posters, cookbooks or puzzles and games. This list is extensive.

Having said that, the question becomes which examples of his advertising best informs us of the enterprise. By my way of thinking, his almanacs and other publications give us one of the most complete pictures of his pitch to an American public desperate to cope with disease in an age where real, medically competent physicians were indeed rare. Among his publications, one of the best has to be his Artist’s Albums. I say “albums,” because there were actually two. While one of the two is distinctly more rare than the other, both are terrific examples of his marketing. The version with Santa Claus going down the chimney (above) is the more common of the two, while the version with the boy sitting on the log (below) is rare.

Unlike other Warner’s Safe publications that were printed by Mensing & Stecher, the Artists’ Albums were printed by Cosack & Company of Buffalo, New York. The back cover of both albums featured a box of Log Cabin Sarsaparilla.

Apart from the terrific graphics, the Artists’ Albums feature the most comprehensive catalog of the Warner’s Safe Cure inventory as it existed in 1888. The featured products included Safe Cure, Rheumatic Cure, Diabetes Cure, Nervine, Tippecanoe – The Best, Asthma Cure, Safe Pills, Benton Hair Grower, Animal Cure, Log Cabin Sarsaparilla, Log Cabin Hops & Buchu Remedy, Log Cabin Cough & Consumption Remedy, Log Cabin Hair Tonic, Log Cabin Extract, Log Cabin Plaster, Log Cabin Rose Cream, Log Cabin Liver Pills and Safe Yeast.  Each of the products was discussed and a facsimile of the package was included. The next part of this post will feature some of those articles.

The Artists’ Albums were issued at about the time that Warner’s medicine empire reached its peak. Over the period of the next five years, Warner went from proprietary medicine mogul to financial collapse and public humiliation. These publications provide us with a glimpse of the types of products pitched to our great grandparents.

Special thanks to Jon Moran for reminding me of the uniqueness of the Artist’s Album and providing me with scans of its contents.

Warner’s Safe Cure: Digging in Toronto

I always love to hear bottle digging stories, especially ones where the treasures unearthed include a Safe Cure or two.  Recently, on his site Dumpdiggers, Rob Campbell recounted the story of The Lost Creek Under Toronto’s Streetcar Condos.  This is a wonderful account of  the digging of a long lost creek that yielded some 300+ bottles, including a rare 3-Cities Safe Nervine Half Pint. The half pint Nervine from Toronto is rarest of the Warner’s from that office with the exception of the Reversed “N’s” Safe Cure. Nice work Rob.

Warner’s Safe Cure: Digging “Down Under”

One of the things I’ve always wanted to do, but have never done is to dig a Warner’s Safe Cure.  A garden variety Kidney & Liver Cure would do. I’m not picky. Just the thrill of seeing that profile of a safe  emerge from a trash pit would pretty much do me in.  Truly buried treasure.  Recently, I discovered a website that I recommend to you called The Australian Antique Bottle Forum.  This great site brings together all manner of bottle collectors from down under. Needless to say, I had to check out the Warner’s collectors and, to my delight, I found quite a few.

One of the posts that immediately caught me eye was on Warner’s Safe Cures that had been recently dug. Feast your eyes on these beauties from the Melbourne and Dundein (4-Cities) Offices. Did I happen to mention that all of these came out of one hole?  I need to go digging with Steve. 

Okay, let’s see.  Melboure and 4-Cities Safe Cures in various shades, two Melboure Safe Medicines,  two 4-Cities Diabetes Cures (rare),  two Melbourne  and one 4-Cities Rheumatic Cures (really rare),  a Melbourne Safe Nervine and a Safe Remedies and three H. H. Warner & Co. Ltd. bottles. What else do you need?  If I had been in that hole, I would have passed out. Really nice stuff. Keep those great Warner’s coming!

Warner’s Safe Cure: Frankfurt Beauty!

This little beauty recently sold on eBay for a cool $1725.  The seller was in Poland, so it appears that a few of these gems are still coming to the surface.  Both the green and the amber Frankfurt Nervine half pints made “Honorable Mention” on my “A List.”  Although both colors are very rare, the amber is perhaps slightly rarer having been unlisted before 2005 by Ojea. You probably won’t see another one of these on eBay any time soon.

Warner’s Safe Cure: Newspaper Advertisements

It seems that virtually every medium available to H. H. Warner carried his pitch to the patent medicine buying public. In the age the preceded broadcast media, newspapers were the principal way to reach out to the public at large. Fortunately, copies of those newspapers including their advertisements still exist and I have been able to pull out a few of the Warner’s Safe Cure ads that ran from the early 1880′s until into the 1920′s.  As you will see, many of the ads take on a familiar formula and incorporate testimonials that proclaim that Warner’s Safe Cure saved the user from certain death. Although the ads are not limited to Safe Cure, many of them continue the pitch that Warner made when he first introduced his line of Safe Cures – the kidneys are the key to good health.

The above advertisement is the earliest I have found to date. It ran in the Fort Wayne News on June 11, 1880. Notably, it mentions parenthectically “Formerly Dr. Craig’s Kidney Cure”.  Clearly, Warner had not established himself and wanted to ride the coattails of Craig. The ad also lists the early Safe Cures including: Kidney & Liver Cure, Diabetes Cure, Nervine, Bitters and Safe Pills.  With an almost biblical flourish, it says “Read! Save Thyself.”

A close look at the ad reveals that it looks almost amateurish. Most of the print is typeset, but the graphics look almost hand-drawn. Needless to say, it would be a few years before Warner would have a full marketing department at his disposal.

Warner’s Safe Cure: The Rochester “A” List (Part II)

Although the Warner’s Safe Cures manufactured by the Chambers Works are early examples of the Safe Cure bottles, they are not the earliest.  After Warner acquired  the rights to Dr. Craig’s Kidney Cure, one of his first bottles was the shoulder-embossed Safe Cure (pictured above). While I would not consider this bottle to be rare, they have become harder to get.  The same is true for the Rochester Safe Cure. Only in Rochester was Safe Cure called “Safe Kidney & Liver Cure”. In all the other foreign offices, it was simply referred to as “Safe Cure.” For a short period, the Rochester bottle was also embossed “Safe Cure”.

While neither the shoulder-embossed Safe Cure nor the Rochester Safe Cure make the “A” List, there are some that do. For example, this aqua Kidney & Liver Remedy. While the amber is relatively common and the clear would likely be considered more scarce, aqua is down right rare.

 The same might be said of two  other Rochester variants, both of which are considered mold errors. The first is the “No Safe” Safe Remedies Company. For whatever reason, the bottle manufacturer omitted the word “Safe” from the mold leaving the bottle embossed “Warner’s Remedies Co.”  While the unlabelled Warner’s Safe Remedies Co. bottles are considered common, the Warner’s Remedies Co. are rare. The second variant is made rare, not be the omission of embossing, but by the addition of it. It is the half pint Nervine with “8 OZ” embossed just below the neck. Here again, the half pint Nervine is considered fairly common, but in this case, the glassmaker probably used a half pint Safe Cure mold and slugged out the word “Cure,” replacing it with “Nervine.” The result is a fairly rare variant.

Another very difficult Rochester find is the Warner’s Safe Remedy sample. While the Safe Cure sample appears regularly, the Safe Remedy sample comes around far less often.  Find one that’s labelled and you have a real gem. This is also true of the labeled Safe Diabetes Remedy sample.

Most discriminating bottle collectors turn their noses up a screw top bottles. However, not all screw top medicines are considered equal. Take, for example, the Warner’s Compound bottles sold by the Warner’s Remedies Company. These very late Warner’s are highly prized by Warner’s collectors due to their rarity.

The other significant category of Rochester Warner’s are the Log Cabin Remedies. They are the subject of Part III of this series.

Warner’s Safe Cure: The Rochester “A” List (Part I)

A couple years ago, I attempted to put together a list of Warner’s Safe Cures that are the most difficult varieties to get.  I called it the “A” Lists. I did this with the help of other knowledgeable Warner’s collectors. I had originally set out to do a “Top 10 List,” but I found that it was difficult to arrange the rarest Warner’s in any meaningful order and that it necessarily meant comparing apples to oranges. Instead, I settled for a list of rare Warner’s in no particular order. Since the A-List was published, I have heard from numerous collectors with suggested additions to the list as well as other improvements.

This time around, I am going to group the rare Warner’s by office and I will include a picture, either from my collection or another. This will include reference to Ed Ojea’s Warner’s Reference Guide site. As is appropriate, I will start where it all started in Rochester. Although Rochester is the  source of the most ubiquitous Warner bottle, the Kidney & Liver Cure, it also produced a few rarer examples. The rarity of a Warner bottle may be as much about color as it is about type. A perfect example is the Kidney & Liver Cure. The standard K&L Cure will fetch anywhere from $18-25 depending on condition. However, if you come  up with an example that is a very pale amber or has shades of green, the rarity and value is enhanced dramatically.

Turning to the Rochester variants, the best place to start is with the early Warner’s Cures packaged in bottles produced at the Chambers Works in Pittsburgh. These bottles are characterized by the “gravestone” shaped slug plate that traces the edge of the entire face of the bottle and by the acronym “A&DHC” embossed on the base of the bottle for Alexander and David H. Chambers. The K&L Cure from Chambers Works catapults to the $100-125 range. Other Warner’s bottles produced by the Chambers Works include the NERVINE,  DIABETES CURE,  BITTERS (Pint and Half Pint),  TONIC (Pint & Half Pint) and TONIC BITTERS (Pint and Half Pint).

I have pictured several examples above (courtesy of Ed Ojea), which illustrate the typical Chambers Works bottle. Note that the pints are topped with the double collar lip, while the half pints typically have the medicine lip. Although “A&HDC” usually appears on the base, that is not true on every bottle. Of the Chambers Works Warner’s, the hardest to get are the DIABETES CURE, the NERVINE (half pint), the TONIC BITTERS (both sizes) and the BITTERS (half pint).

In the next part, I will take on some of the other Warner rarities from Rochester.