By: Kerry S. González
Often times local residents interested in the history of the area, or more specifically the history of their property, bring us artifacts to identify. Most recently a long-time resident of Fredericksburg brought us some materials found during recent modifications to their home. Most of their items dated to the mid-eighteenth century through the Civil War-era, but one particular artifact really piqued our interest here at Dovetail.
The artifact pictured below is perfume bottle manufactured by Richard Hudnut (Photo 1). This clear, embossed bottle was machine made, as is evidenced by the tell tale Owens machine mark, and post-dates 1919. According to Lockhart and Hoenig (2015), the Owens Bottle Company began using a logo comprising an embossed “O” in a square or box in 1919. This logo fell out of use after the company merged and was renamed the Owens-Illinois Glass Company in 1929. However, the manufacture of bottles like this likely continued to use the former logo until around 1931 (Lockhart and Hoenig 2015).
Photo 1: Richard Hudnut Perfume Bottle.
So why did we find this artifact so interesting if it is a basic perfume bottle from the early-twentieth century? During examination of the bottle we realized the scent of the perfume it once held was still present when the stopper was removed and can best be described as “powdery.”
While Richard Hudnut manufactured cosmetics early in his career, he moved to perfumes by the early-twentieth century (Figure 1). Some of his fragrances include Violet Sec (1896), Aimee (1902), Vanity (1910), and Three Flowers (1915). Based on the manufacture date of the bottle it is believed that the scent Three Flowers was once contained in the Fredericksburg bottle.
The selection of an adornment scent is very personal. The ability to not only identify this bottle type but the exact scent it once contained is a direct testament to one of archaeology’s most important missions—discovering the people in our past.
Figure 1: Richard Hudnut Advertisement From 1916 (www.Cosmeticsandskin 2019)
References:
Cosmeticsandskin.com
2019 Cosmetics and Skin-Richard Hudnut. Electronic document, https://cosmet
icsandskin.com/companies/richard-hudnut.php, accessed June 2019.
Lockart, Bill, and Russ Hoenig
2015 The Bewildering Array of Owen-Illinois Glass Co. Logos and Codes. Electronic document, https://sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/OwensIll_BLockhart.pdf, accessed June 2019.
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