Crawford Wettlaufer became an authority on early American glass and never hesitated to share his knowledge and collection, which contained many rarities, with other collectors. Dale Kuhn, of Ohio, was a pharmacist who had amassed a wonderful collection of glass that eventually was sold by Garth’s auction house near Delaware, Ohio. The sale gave modern collectors an opportunity to buy treasured items that previously had not been available. There were no bottle shows during his era and the only recourse collectors had was to buy from some of the many lists sent through the mails, or advertised in the antique journals. Earl Seigfreid. Early collector. Parke G. Smith was a collector and authority on early American flasks. He authored bottle-related stories in The Magazine Antiques (See Neil C. Gest) and other publications during the 1930s and 1940s. Edwin LeFevre was an early collector of bottles. His main claim to fame came when he authored a story, “Why I Collect Empty Bottles,” in the Saturday Evening Post of Oct. 16, 1929. Charles McMurray was a well-known antiques dealer in Dayton, Ohio. He wrote articles for local newspapers and in 1927 published a small black handbook on bottles, using items from his own collection for the photos. In 1970, a Connecticut bookseller sent out a list of bottle books for sale. On the list was a small black handbook the bookseller said was authored by Charles B. Gardner and himself. Turned out that Gardner had only priced the bottles in the book, which was nearly identical in every way to McMurray’s 1927 book. Sam Laidacker was the author of two excellent books on blue China dishes. He also published a small magazine or paper on antiques in general. He operated an antiques shop in Bristol, Pa., and was considered an authority on antique bottles. He relocated to Bloomsburg, Pa., in the late 1960s and continued to deal from a large mansion and carriage house. His father was collecting flasks and Kentucky rifles in the early 1900s. His brother, John, had 1,000 historical flasks to sell in the mid-1960s. Sam’s son, Jack, became an authority on guns and military medals and an author on the subject. Sam also did cataloging for many of the prominent auction houses across the country. He helped FOHBC Hall of Famers Dick and Elma Watson develop an expertise in antique bottles and sold them many that became the foundation for their extensive collection. 1991
Dr. Julian Harrison Toulouse was a student of glass containers for more than 30 years. He was chief engineer and manager of quality control and operations research and later consultant to the Owens-Illinois Glass Company. He was chief of the glass container section of the War Production Board during World War II. He was the author of Fruit Jars: A Collector’s Manual, in 1969 and Bottle Makers and Their Marks in 1971. 1992
Ron Fowler was born in 1947 and is retired from the SAFECO Insurance Co. He became interested in bottles and their histories while serving as manager of the Triple R Ranch in Olympia, Wash. He discovered the ranch’s dump and excavated it over a period of several years. The bottles he uncovered he did research on. He maintains a worldwide correspondence with fellow bottle collectors. He was a monthly columnist for Old Bottle Magazine from 1983 to 1986. The author of six books on bottle collecting, he received FOHBC awards for research and editing. He established the Hutchinson Bottle Collectors’ Association in 2007 and continues compiling data while documenting the existence of more than 15,000 Hutchinson bottles. 86