Page 32 - JOA-July-22

Above: Bottle finds in Philadelphia. Photo by Peter Woodall

ollectors will tell you it’s the thrill of the hunt for what they love
that drives their passion for collecting. That’s certainly true among
Cbottle collectors, who have many places to look and dig through to
find their treasures outside of antique shops, eBay, auction houses, flea
markets, and bottle dealers. Whether it’s an appreciation for the art form or
for the history, or both, bottles and how they are found tell interesting
stories. Here are a few off-the-beaten path places to look, their stories, and
a sample of what has been found:

Glass Bottle Beach
First a horse rendering plant, then a 19th century landfill, Dead Horse
Bay in Brooklyn, NY is a glass digger’s paradise of century-old bottles.
Dead Horse Bay got its name sometime in the 1850s, when horse-
rendering plants surrounded the beach. From the 1850s until the
1930s, the carcasses of dead horses and other animals from New York
City streets were used to manufacture glue, fertilizer, and other products
on the site. As the car industry grew, horses and buggies—thus horse
carcasses—became scarce, and by the 1920s there was only one rendering
plant left. Reader and casual collector Laurie Kantor of Long Beach, NY shares these photos
It was during this era, around the turn of the century, that the marsh from an April 2018 trip to Dead Horse Bay in NY.
of Dead Horse Bay began to be used as a landfill, which was capped in
the early 1930s. The cap burst in the 1950s and since then garbage has
been leaking continually onto the beach and into the ocean, including
thousands upon thousands of broken and intact bottles, many over 100
years old!
“Glass Bottle Beach,” as it is now
known, is open to the public for picking
(if you can stomach some of the other
remnants of Dead Horse Bay’s pungent
past). Reader and casual collector Laurie
Kantor of Long Beach, NY shares these
photos from an April 2018 trip to Dead
Horse Bay. “I’ve always loved glass, and I
Prospect Brewing bottle top used to make stained glass as a hobby,” said
Photo by Peter Woodall Laurie Kantor. “I read about Dead Horse
Bay in Brooklyn several years ago and was
interested in going there but had trouble convincing my husband to
accompany me. We have a tradition that on my birthday I get to choose
where we go so this year we went to Dead Horse Bay! I was sure there
would be nothing left by the time I got there, but as you can see from
the pictures, there are plenty of bottles left! I could not stop myself from
picking up the glass, until it got too heavy to carry. A lot of the bottles
have embossed lettering giving clues to what they were used for in the
past. There is a tide at this bay but not strong waves, so there were
many items intact and not worn down by the elements.”

Privy Digging
Interesting bottle finds turn up in the most unusual places, as any
privy digger will tell you. Privy digging is a form of historical digging
in defunct outhouse vaults to salvage antique bottles and everyday
household artifacts from the past. Privy digging is directly linked to

30 Journal of Antiques and Collectibles