Part of a regular series on Kootenaiana sold on eBay
Two more soda water bottles from the Slocan Bottling Works of Kaslo sold last week, for $160 and $179 US respectively.
The Lower Mainland seller listed the two Hutch-style, aqua-coloured soda bottles separately. Both were embossed “Slocan Bottling Works/Charles J. Kapps/Kaslo B.C.” while one also had “CLUB” on the back.
One bottle drew three bids, and the other four.
Although the bottles are not especially scarce, they are still highly desirable.
Last July, a rare variant with three spelling mistakes, embossed “CHOPPEL & KOPPS / CASLO BC” sold for $866.
Six other bottles from the same plant have sold on eBay since 2001, fetching $43 to $251 each.
The bottles date to the 1890s. Charles Kapps had a bottling works on D Avenue in Kaslo, and then moved to 5th Street a few years later, in the back of the present Langham Cultural Centre.
He took on William Chappell as a partner in 1896, but this only lasted about a year. Kapps left Kaslo for Vancouver, then Bellingham, and Spokane, where he had several valuable real estate holdings and a stake in the Deep Wonder mine in Idaho.
• Among the more noteworthy postcard sales of the last month, a lovely coloured view of the now-drowned town of Arrowhead in winter went for $112.50. What’s curious about this card is that the mountains in the distance have been airbrushed out and replaced with water.
The card was mailed from Nanaimo to Thorpe, Ont. and bears the message: “This is where Str. Rossland landed. From here we took a sleeper and did nit change again until we reached Vancouver. Suppose you have heard about your new niece. Blake and I were at Seattle one day last week. It seems lonesome since he has gone away. Gretta.”
Another interesting card was one of Kootenay Lake that sold for $55. It’s postmarked 1902, making it one of the earliest known picture postcards of West Kootenay. It was produced by the BC Prints and Engraving Co. of Vancouver and sent from Seattle to Glasgow.
The sender wrote the following verse: “Everybody’s well, Feeling ‘out of sight,’ When mail-day draweth near, Don’t forget to write.”
• An old souvenir pitcher with an illustration of Doukhobor women pulling a plough went for $20.50, which was a bargain.
According to the seller in Buffalo, New York, it was made in Germany.
The depicted scene was based on what occurred on the Prairies in the late 19th and early 20th century. Young men worked away from the colonies, so women did the farm work — including hitching themselves to the ploughs where they lacked horses.
This story will appear in the December 1 edition of the West Kootenay Advertiser.