Rare WWII 1943 Anderson Erickson Round Creamer Quart Milk Bottle

Description

Anderson Erickson 1 quart WWII 1943 Creamer Milk Bottle "IT WHIPS" is imprinted 3 times around the neck. ANDERSON ERICKSON PASTEURIZED MILK on the front.
The back is imprinted with "FOOD FIGHTS TOO" Use it Wisely, PLAN ALL MEALS FOR VICTORY, BALANCE YOUR MEALS WITH MILK.
The bottom is marked AE Duraglas  18  3  ML 715 The bottom edge says, ONE QUART LIQUID on the front side and REGISTERED SEALED BB 48 on the back side.
The 18 in the makers mark denotes Owen-Corning bottle plant in
Columbus, OH 1930-1948. The 3 denotes made in 1943.
I found it under my grandparent's front porch where my grandfather did work on the house during the war. My late grandfather built the addition to the house himself. He must have tossed it on the dirt after adding the porch on and enclosing it. The bottle is in excellent condition with bright color since it was kept in the dark under the porch for the last 73 years. The last 3 photos with the Styrofoam pellets are of another identical bottle (identical label, condition) that sold for 6 last summer and is only used to illustrate the exterior graphics of the bottle better.
Duraglas
- This was the proprietary name for a process used by the
Owens-Illinois Glass Company
where the surface of the hot, just produced bottles, were sprayed on the body, shoulder, and neck (not base or the top of the finish) with a stannic chloride vapor that allowed the tin to bond to the outer surface and providing scratch resistance and durability to the bottles.  (Information courtesy of Phil Perry, engineer with that company.)  This process - and the embossed notation of it ( in script) on the base of many
Owens-Illinois
products - began in 1940 and continued up until at least the mid-1950s, though the process is still in use today without the notation (Toulouse 1971; Miller & Morin 2004; Phil Perry, O-I engineer pers. comm. 2007).  The photo to the right is a 1941 beer bottle with the
Duraglas
notation in the lower portion of the base embossing.
The "Diamond O-I" makers mark of the
Owens-Illinois Glass Co.
is shown in the picture within the white box.  This mark is also called the "Saturn" mark by some due to its stylized resemblance.  (Note: The "O" in the Diamond O-I marking is actually a vertically elongated oval, although referred to here as an "O" for simplicity.)  This makers mark is
very
common on bottles made during 1929-1930 to mid-1950s period as the company was (and still is) a dominant force in the bottle production world at that time (Toulouse 1971; Lockhart 2004d).
The various
Owens-Illinois
markings provide an opportunity to also identify which plant made the bottle and in what year.  Specifically for the pictured export beer bottle, the script
Duraglas
marking and the stippling (molded "roughness") around the outside edge of the base were both used first in 1940, so this bottle can date no earlier than that.  The "1" to the right of Diamond O-I mark is the year code and in this case obviously can not be earlier than 1941 (i.e., not 1931) because of the
Duraglas
embossing and stippling.  In the early 1940s, realizing that single digit date codes were repeating (e.g., "0" could be 1930 or 1940), caused the company to add a period after the single digit on some bottle types - primarily soda bottles (not beer bottles) - from about that time to the mid-1940s.  At that point two digit year codes (e.g., "46" for 1946) were used on most bottles types; in particular, beer, soda, and milk bottles.  Unfortunately, the use of the one and two-digit date codes was inconsistently used by different plants and mold makers so this is not a certain rule for dating.
For example, the illustrated bottle was highly likely to have been made in 1941  since one made in 1951 would likely have a date code of "51."  The "20" to the left of the Diamond O-I mark is the code for the Oakland, CA. plant* which began operations in 1936 and is still in operation today - so knowing the factory is of no use in pinning down the manufacturing date.  Similarly, the bottle is paper labeled as having been used by the
Columbia Brewing Inc.
(Tacoma, WA.) who did business under that name from 1934 to 1953 when it became the
Heidelberg Brewing Co.
(Van Wieren 1995).  Once again though, this bit of information does not help pin down the date.  The clincher for the 1941 date is the heavier (thicker) glass that this particular bottle was made with identifying it as having been made just prior to the wartime reduction in the amount of glass used for many bottle types as a conservation effort during WWII.  This bottle is also an example of how even with the relatively ample amount of information
Owens-Illinois
bottle bases provide, one may still need to rely on more than one piece of data (e.g., plant codes, brewery dates of operation/business) to ensure a reliable manufacturing date determination
Between 1954 and about 1959 the
Owens-Illinois Glass Co.
changed the Diamond O-I marking to a simpler "I in an O" mark (same basic mark minus the elongated diamond) although the time of this change varied through the noted period depending on the specific plant, mold life, and possibly bottle type.  The base image to the right is of this newer mark on a bottle made at plant #21 (Portland, OR.) in 1960 - the first year of operation for the Portland plant (Toulouse 1971; Girade 1989; Lockhart 2004d)*.  Date codes with this later mark (still in use today) are variable with both single and double digit codes (like in the image) observed, though recently made beer bottles (1990's and later) seem to consistently have two digit codes (empirical observations).