A LIVING HISTORY BLOG.

18TH CENTURY LIVING HISTORY IN AUSTRALIA.
Showing posts with label containers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label containers. Show all posts

Sunday, 4 November 2018

More Gunpowder Bag Documentation. 1739.

One of the authors leathern gunpowder bags.

The Pennsylvania Gazette
April 12, 1739
BOSTON, February 26.
"Wednesday Morning a sorrowful Accident happen'd at the House of Cap. Thomas Homans in the westerly Part of this Town near Hooper's Meeting House: A small Quantity of Powder (suppos'd to be about a Quart) in a Leathern Bag, having been some time since put up on the Jam of a Chimney in a Chamber wherein they had been us'd to make a Fire, and the Family being about moving into the Country, did not suppose they should every have Occasion for a Fire there: But a young Child being out of Order two or three Days ago, they made a Fire in the same Chimney, and unhappily forgot the Powder,

Sunday, 4 February 2018

Doc Paul's Salt Horn.

One of the best replica salt horns I have seen, lovely work. Not too flashy, but tasteful.

Photo & horn by Paul J Schonbrun.

Wednesday, 27 April 2016

More on Food Packaging.

A Firkin.


In the 18th century bottles, jars & cloth bags were popular items for containing a variety of foods, spices & drinks. Bottles in particular have been found at many historical sites, & it is known that they were reused for containing a variety of liquids. 
It seems that commercial sales of foods stuffs was in bulk form, suggesting that the retail purchaser would supply their own containers for the amount they wished to purchase, but also money was offered by some businesses for bottles, suggesting that some retailers offered these bottles to customers.
Some of the author's items for repackaging food & drink products.

Below is a record of commercial 18th century food & drink containers. This information is from a PDF, the link to which I have supplied. This PDF contains much more information, including containers from the 19th century, & images of original containers.

Food & Drink Packaging.
Olive oil sold in flasks and jars is an example of this product/package link.
mustard in quarter-pound bottles, pickles in quart bottles, olive oil by the jar or chest.
Kegs were used for dried goods such as split peas, barley, crackers, oatmeal, raisins, and rice; for butter, lard, or paint oils; for pickled meats and other pickles; sometimes for alcohol and sometimes for other packaging:
Hogs Lard in small kegs from 20 to 28 lbs. each (QG 26 May 1785:Richard Dalton).
Barley in 50 and 25 lb cags (New-York Mercury [NYM] 26 Jan. 1761:John Alexander and Company).
Best Nantz Brandy in 8 and 4 Gallon Kegs (NYM 3 Aug. 1761 :Dirck Brinckerhoff).
Choice French Brandy in Kegs of 5 and 6 Gallons, at five Shillings Halifax per Gallon (QG 20 Dec. 1770:John Lees). Linseed oyl in 10 gallon cags (NYM 12 Jan. 1761:Isaac Man).
 7 Kegs Mustard in 1-4 lb. bottles (Montreal Herald [MH] 22 Jan. 1820:Macnider, Aird, & Whyte).
Chocolate by the Box or Dozen (NYM 1 June 1761:John Morton). A few boxes fresh Durham flour mustard, (NSG&WC 30 June 1789:s. Hart).
 lb. bottles A very fresh, excellent Kind of Poland Starch and Hair Powder in Boxes of Cwt. each in Pound papers (NSG&WC 24 May 1785:David Fergusson).
fine Genoa Vermacelli, at 1s. a Pound, or 14s. a Box, containing seventeen Pounds (DA 14 Dec. 1739:Joseph Carbon).
Lemmons by the Box, Hundred or Dozen (Boston Gazette & Country Journal [BG&CJ] 14 March 1774:Joseph Hall).
bohea tea by the box, dozen or single pound (NYM 23 June 1755:Matheus Sleght).
Bags held dry products such as bottle corks, biscuit, flour, coffee, and sometimes ginger, pepper, snuff, and cocoa nuts.
Cheshire Cheese by the Basket or Single Cheese (NSG&WC 14 June 1785:Edward Oxnard).
Gloucester Cheese by the Basket or smaller quantity (NSG&WC 23 Feb. 1779:Andrew Thomson).
bohea and congo teas, pound, half and quarter pound tin cannisters (NYM 4 Oct. 1762:Richard Curson).
He has likewise a parcel of fine green tea, in pound canisters, at 14s. a canister (NYM 29 Dec. 1766:Edward Agar).
Portable soup, of the best Sorts, made separately from Beef, Veal, Mutton, and Chicken, is sold at 4s. a Dozen in Tin Boxes, which is about equal to 8s. a Pound, excepting the Chicken. Also an inferior Sort made into square Cakes from Beef, is sold by Weight at 5s. a Pound, very handy for Sauces as well as Soups. . . . This Commodity has been made, ever since the late Rebellion, by Mrs. Bennet (whose Name was then Du Bois) and it was at that Time, and ever since, greatly valued by Gentlemen in the Army (DA 11 Sept. 1762:Portable Soup.
Naples soap, at 5s a pot, Containing eight ounces (DA 31 Jan. 1740:Joseph Carbn). A Fine parcel of New Honey, of this year’s collecting in glazed Pots, leather’d on the Top, and in Pots from 15 lb. to 35 lb. and to be sold as follows: Single Pots at Fourpence Halfpenny per Pound, and at Forty Shillings per Hundred; and some Allowance to those who take a larger Quantity (DA 17 Sept. 1762:To be Sold at the Windmill . . . ). Potted Venison in small Pots at Six-pence per Pot (DA 29 July 1760:To be Sold, Fine true Grass fed Venison . . . ).
Lately landed a curious Parcel of Bloom Sun Raisins, much finer than any in the Jars, in small Boxes about 12 Ib. each, to be sold by the Importer . . . at 7s. a Pound. No less Quantity than a Box (DA 4 Jan. 1762: Lately landed.
Twenty Jars of very fine Lucca Oil, each Jar containing about thirty Gallons, one Jar in each lot (DA 21 NOV. 1739:To be soid by Auction.
 Fine Lucca Sallad Oil, neat as imported, in whole Jars, Half-jars, and Quarter-Jars (DA 23 May 1740:To be Sold . . . ).


Friday, 12 February 2016

Can you identify these containers?

Does anyone know what these containers were used for? I posted a similar container not too long ago and now these have come to light via a friend. A more likely use than I first thought could be containers for gunpowder? Any ideas on when these were made or in use? Where were they made?









Monday, 5 March 2012

Thoughts on 18th Century food packaging.

I started off researching packaging for chocolate, and really did not get very far. This led me to wonder about other forms of food packaging, and I did not get far there either! So I decided to apply my past experimental archaeology experience and some common sense, and decided, at least for now, that there really are not many choices.
Paper bags were not a commercial product until the late 18th century to 19th century, though in 1743, John Bartram with a supply of paper from London, did make his own paper bags, both large and small to hold seeds (New Green World, Josephine Herbst, page 71). Of course at this time paper was made from flax, not from wood as it is today, and later they made paper from old linen rags. So I guess there is a precedent for using paper.

Leather and cloth food bags plus a couple of glass bottles. Pottery was also used, but it tends to be too heavy for packing on foot. Glass although fragile, can be wrapped in cloth or covered in leather.

Then there are linen bags and leather pouches, both of which have been used in a variety of sizes for centuries for carrying and storing foods. We also know that items intended originally for one use, were often used for for others once empty. such as bottles. Wine and spirit bottles could be used for carrying water or even cooking oil (Encyclopedia Of The American Revolution).
One chap found that a powder horn he had found did not contain gunpowder...

"Found my powder horn was filled with spirits and got drunk as a wheel barrow.”
Constant Belcher of Elizabethtown 1776.
http://greensleeves.typepad.com/berkshires/ogden_genealogy/

This cloth sack was used for provisions in a 1910 expedition and contains cocoa powder. Now I realise that 1910 is 200 years too late for us, but I figure if it was still in use two hundred years later, then it was probably a favoured method for carrying food provisions in the earlier period. Flour was carried in cloth sacks, so why not cocoa powder.

Spices could be carried in a small or large bottle, or they could have been contained in some folded paper, as in perhaps an envelope. This in turn could be secured in a cloth bag.

This I would have taken for a replica, but the tag sais it is medieval period and it is in the museum of London.


 These three images of drawstring pouches are from Diderot's 18th century encyclopedia.