Kilmer, Radam,
Swaim, Warner, Townsend —- common names and common bottles
if you are a collector. But, we probably owe our fascination for
the hobby to these men. They sort of wrote the history of patent
medicines. Swaim was the first entrepreneur to be so hugely
successful that he was widely copied. Townsend’s
Sarsaparilla made him one of the first really rich Americans.
Warner and Kilmer were the 19th century equivalents to
todays’ Merck and Glaxo. Radam built on the marketing
lessons he took from others, then added his own exaggerations, so
wild that they helped bring the downfall of an era..”CURES
ALL DISEASES’These are probably the first medicines that new collectors covet. These guys had some of the most interesting and appealing bottles that you could want; colored, pontiled medicines, bitters, cures, sarsaparilla, picture bottles, wild claims. They run in price from very affordable to mega bucks. Collections can, and have been, built around one of these men.
This article is about William Radam’s American Products. I guess we all know about the Fungus and Lungus variants, the “crossed legged” version, the No. 2 jug, but do you know of others?
I have pictured seventeen distinct variants of bottles and jugs. I have to thank Dann Louis for including his very rare and expensive miniature and my mother for her extensive pottery collection......
