I made a silly mistake yesterday and wandered into one of the local junk/antique shops. I am sure there are a few of you out there who won’t be asking why that was silly though 😉
Wolfe’s Aromatic Schnapps.
In my wanders I found a lovely, four-sided, light green bottle embossed with AROMATIC SCHNAPPS and immediately decided the other old bottles on my bathroom window ledge needed a new friend.
Once I bought it home I dumped it in a bath of bicarb, vinegar and washing liquid (thanks to EllaDee for that recipe) and left it for the night.
This morning instead of spending time doing the far more recently dirty dishes I should have been attending to, I was bent over the laundry sink with pipe cleaners and a chopstick scraping the gunk out of it.
After using my best pipe cleaner bending techniques I now have a bottle which looks deserving of a nice spot on the ledge, instead of something that probably should have been left in the hole it was dug out of….
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Border Watch 14 Dec 1895 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article78846158
Whenever I add a new bottle to my collection I try to find a newspaper article advertising the miracles its contents may have once imparted.
A bit of archive searching last night made me think that a braver person might have kept all those icky bottle scrapings and made up some sort of tonic.
Wolfe’s Schiedam Aromatic Schnapps was a mixture of gin and Juniper berries but, apparently, that innocent sounding recipe was likely to cure you of anything that might be wrong with you, I can’t believe that it isn’t still available in every shop! 😉
I wonder though, was there a secret ingredient in the bottle, or was the secret just the more obvious one of swigging down gin every time you felt a bit bad making you forget your troubles?
That warm glow that followed probably led to the drinker believing they were being cure of what ailed them!
Euroa Advertiser 2 Aug 1895 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65521925
Buried words and Bushwa. 
I knew you’d been lured into buying something! Great finds, both 🙂
Thanks, I was pretty happy with them too!
Judging by the illustration in that bit of advertising it isn’t good for baldness or your eyesight though is it! 😉
What a wonderful find. I’m just amazed you managed to walk out with just one item! I collect old cups and saucers so antique shops draw me like Mecca. I wish I could find the provenance of some of my little ‘finds’.
I wonder if all that cleaning woke a genie from your bottle? Something sent us some fantastic rain. Thank you Metan and thank you Wolff’s. 😀
I have become adept at restricing myself to one purchase only, unless it is an extreme circumstance of course. It is just up the road though, so I can go back any day I choose and still keep to my one purchase only rule…. 😉
Number 2 collects bits of china, broken and intact, and we always wish we knew the stories behind everything he buys. I love being able to find these old adverts for the bottles 😀
I would like to find a genie bottle though, especially a rain calling one!
-grin- Be careful what you wish for or we might need another Noah’s Ark!
I’m curious, what does No.2 do with the broken bits of china?
So far he just hoards his bits of pot but he has plans to make mosaics out of them. Hmmm.. maybe I should get the bits for him to be able to do it this school holidays.
That sounds like a very good idea. You know your boys never cease to amaze me. Almost makes me wish I’d had a son [as well as The Daughter!]. 🙂
From what I have seen of the Daughters drawings she is a treasure herself! 🙂
-grin- Yeah, she’s not bad. 😉
Love the second picture… now who would do that? I found an old mini urn with Stones Geen ginger wine ok nit. It’s gorgeous, if I didn’t love it so much I might send it to you…
Your Stone’s urn sounds great, I love these old bits of the world we get to hang on to 🙂
What an interesting find. It’s a really great looking bottle too. Have you any idea when they stopped making this miracle or when your particular bottle is from?
I think they might have stopped around the early 1900’s. Originally the schnapps was made in Holland but then moved to New York. It became so well-known that it seems that it was hard to get in full strength as on arrival it was immediately diluted so the importers could make more money!
I wonder what the recipe was- you could go into business!
I wonder if the secret ingredient was hair of the dog? 😉
What a wonderful find!
When I was delving into its history I thought of you 🙂 On a bit of advertising from 1895 an address for the sole manufacturer and importer of Udolpho Wolfe’s was given as ‘18,20 and 22 Beaver Street New York’
Great bottle, love the green – it came up nicely. It’s lovely to browse and find old treasures for only a few dollars that you can by your own efforts turn into something special, and research the history as well… Or you could go… oh I got that at Ikea…
I loved the green too, it is very different from the other coloured ones I have.
Just like you, I love finding those kinds of things, they are like double treasure. The finding and the buying, then later the tracking down of the history of the contents.
I always try to imagine where the bottle has been and how it ended up in my hands. I always think to myself that this bottle was probably buried in the ground waiting to be discovered before nearly every human on the planet was even born. What an amazing thing!
When I mentioned to the Man I had blown a few bucks on another bottle he fell about feigning horror at the wasted money. I quickly pulled up a page from ebay where the very same bottle (well, almost the very same, he couldn’t tell the difference) was for sale for between $55 and $99. That shut him up…. 😀
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Fabulous post!!! … Love the bottle AND the advertisements 😀 Thanks so much.
Glad you liked it 🙂 I have a few old bottles and have found advertising for most of them but it is mainly a tiny bit of writing (like that at the top of the crocodile picture) tacked onto the end of a large article about shipping arrivals or other boringly un-postable things. To find the crocodile picture was great and meant I HAD to post it 😀
“From chills to kidney disorders” – i love these quack remedies
I think the most amazing parts of these remedies is that anyone who was actually sick thought that it was doing them any good at all!
Can you imagine a modern-day doctor prescribing a regular dose of gin for kidney disorders?
Nope!
… or dare I say a “Gin and a HOT bath to bring on the Menses”? … didn’t work cos here I am 😀 …
😀
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/evening-post/1890/1/3/3 “No complaint is more general than that of the liver for which Wolfe’s Schnapps is the best antidote”
hah!
Found a small portion of glass with the word SCHIE on it on Avalon Beach (Victoria) (An old friend of mine is Norwegian of the mane SCHIE – so he was impressed) And now know where it came from because of this little notice. Thank you very much.