The Temple Israel Museum has collected liquor jugs by Leadville Jewish merchants since the beginning of collecting artifacts for the museum. The museum has amassed a good collection of over 30 jugs, most in the sizes of half gallon and one gallon. Identification of who sold the jugs of liquor is easy since they have printed on them a name or business name with a city, state, and address. However, identifying dates and the jug manufacturers have been a big unanswered question only being able to assign the general dates of when the business was known to exist, which in some cases was for over 30 years. To narrow down the dates and determine manufacturers, more information was needed. This writing summarizes the research process and presents the findings with details in the appendices.

Liquor jugs by Schloss and others.

The first step in the process was to create a spreadsheet of all the jugs in the collection with its descriptive and measurable data along with collecting photographic images of the jugs. Upon inspecting the jugs, either in person or by photos, the different groupings of similar jugs became quite clear as to which manufacturers likely made the jugs. However, this alone was not enough information to draw any conclusions. There are other Jewish companies in Leadville that sold liquor, either wholesale or retail, as well as non-Jewish companies, but the museum does not own any examples these jugs.

The next step was to determine how to get more specific dates for each company. Fortunately, this was easier than initially expected and proved key to immediately narrowing down the dates for most of the companies. Using the Leadville city directories and making a list year by year of the surnames for the companies of which we have jugs gave enough information to organize the companies into a timeline (see graphics below). This gave a breakdown of the different locations of each business, who owned each company and when, and even provided a succession of company ownership. This progression of company names and owners revealed that of the companies where the museum has jugs only four distinct runs of businesses existed with varying names.

The next step in the process was to determine a way to identify the makers of the jugs and perhaps show specific date ranges for when each jug style was in use. Certainly, this was a much harder process! Initially, the museum’s jugs were sorted by their similar type, which resulted in approximately three different general styles, with one style being greatly different from the others. Two of the styles needed rethinking and were resorted using other criteria (more on that later). Because the museum only has the 30+ jugs, this was not enough quantities of each type to determine an accurate set of examples. More jugs were needed to get a better grouping sample. Fortunately, a man named David Clint worked with the Antique Bottle Collectors of Colorado in the 1970s to assemble an exhaustive book for identifying bottles, jugs, and some additional information. Not only did he include the liquor wholesalers and retailers in Colorado, he also included the companies who made the containers. The book is called Colorado Historical Bottles & Etc., 1859-1915. [2]

This book focuses more on glass bottles, but it still had a sizable pottery jug section, which included images, information, and dates about most of the liquor companies in Colorado. Compiling the relevant information into a spreadsheet helped establish the spread of the jugs styles across the state and could help determine specific dates of use, which hopefully could help better identify the companies that made them. This research showed an overwhelming similarity of the Colorado jugs to those of the Leadville companies. Many of the other Colorado liquor companies were only in business for a short time and helped to give some specific dates for specific jug styles. Because the Schloss Brothers company used several different styles of jugs over the course of the business, determining the order or sequence or coinciding use of the jugs is harder to determine.

The book provided a researched list of pottery manufacturers in Colorado, mostly in the Denver area, that likely made the jugs shown in the book. The book states that the ones in the list were the most consistent for the type of clay typically used for crocks and jugs. (See Appendix D for the list assembled by Clint) Certainly, many other potteries existed in various places across the United States and certainly any company could have gone with any supplier no matter where it was located and have the jugs shipped by rail and wagon. However, it makes good economic sense, especially for that time period, that a company would use a supplier local to its region for a lower cost and quicker manufacturer and delivery time. In addition, it is likely that salesmen [4] of these manufacturers would try to drum up business by going to liquor companies to gain business, a common practice with companies of that time period (see Appendix E for an article referencing this). This is likely why so many of the jugs appeared identical among the various companies across the state. With some assumption, this research will use the Colorado potteries as the likely source for most of the jugs.

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The type of material that crocks and liquor jugs were made is generally referred to as stoneware, and specifically American stoneware. This is a type of clay fired in kilns reaching 2192 °F to 2399 °F. The high firing creates a higher vitrification that makes the clay essentially waterproof. However, the crocks and jugs were still coated in a glaze which is good for cleanliness as well as ease of cleaning. Refer to Appendix F for general information about jug fabrication from personal clay working experience.

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Upon sorting the jugs of the Leadville companies and the many other companies in the book (well over 100 examples), several jug styles became obvious, but with slight variations. At first, the variations did not seem important, but upon a closer look, the shapes did matter. Over the course of a pottery business, a style could vary and even vary slightly by each worker in the company. Therefore, the shapes of the jugs were carefully sifted and sorted grouping ones with the most exacting similar shape. The images in the book were not the best, as well as being small, so this took some time and reshuffling. Generally, two basic shapes emerged (and a few other shapes that were excluded and not relevant to the study). One shape is a geometric cylinder body with a relatively cone shaped spout on the top, and the other shape is a single formed piece known as a “bee sting”, basically looking much like a beehive. This bee sting jugs varied less, but the cylinder jugs had many subtle differences and was sorted into several groups. Another detail that varied was glaze. Some of the jugs had a brown glaze known as Albany slip on the inside and covering the spout, while other identical looking jugs did not have this glaze. The use or not of this brown glaze could have been a preference of the liquor company or it possibly could represent a progression of the preferred styles by the manufacturer at different times.

The most noticeable difference among the jugs of this shape have more to do with the labeling rather than the shape. Some of the jugs have large stencil type lettering that would be painted on, while others have cleaner and smaller lettering suggesting a stamping application (see Appendix H for more about jug labeling). A few examples had glaze over the entire body while some only at the top and others having no brown glaze at all. Of the Leadville jugs of the bee sting shape, they all had glaze at the top.

To better understand the cylinder jugs, they had to be meticulously sorted as best as possible. Two specific differences were noted. Some jugs had a lip or rim at the top of the spout while others were smooth not having any lipped articulation at all. Another difference of note is the profile of the neck. The main shapes were cone, dome, and S-curve. Some of the jugs had an elongated neck while others barely had a neck at all. See Appendix G for silhouette profiles of the jugs in the Temple Israel collection.

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Just as important as the shape of the jug is the labeling on the jug. Labeling identifies the jug with a specific company. Several patterns became obvious when comparing the labels on the jugs in the museum’s collection. See Appendix H for more detail about jug labeling.

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The general observed times of need of liquor jugs appeared to greatly increase in the 1890s until Colorado prohibition started in 1916, which halted the need for stoneware liquor jugs, devastating both potteries and liquor companies. The antialcohol movement was gaining momentum in the United States in the late 1800s. First was effort to halt liquor sales on Sundays, known as the Lord’s day, and would eventually lead to the national prohibition starting in 1920 and lasting until the end of 1933, the middle of the Great Depression, when the law was repealed. Apparently, Leadville had an edict where after April 15 of 1895, saloons and liquor sales had to shut down by midnight on Sundays for a full 24 hours. Enforcement would apparently be strict with imprisonment as a fine for breaking the law. [find more information] Another article referenced the edict by suggesting stoneware crock salesmen to come to Leadville to supply liquor companies with a means for people to purchase quantities of liquor ahead of time for Sunday consumption. (Refer to Appendix E) This seems to be the point where larger quantities of liquor sold in several jug sizes skyrocketed.

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While determining the exact date a clay jug was made is nearly impossible to determine, using the information obtained as explained in this writing certainly narrows the date range. In most cases, the dates are limited to a few years, with some longer and some shorter. In addition, determining the maker of each jugs without any manufacturer markings is also difficult to determine. However, using the date ranges and the known dates of when the potteries existed can give plausible conclusions. While not absolute, we can draw conclusions to determine the manufactures and dates until more information can come available to either prove or disprove the plausible results. See Appendix I for the plausible conclusions of the Temple Israel museum jugs.

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