Tuesday 4 November 2014

Vintage signs, old bottles and news for today in BC's history....

Soda pop signs...

Here are a couple of soda pop signs spotted out at the little cafeteria at Heritage Village Museum in Burnaby. They are most likely reproductions but still very nice.



The Thorpe company was started in Vancouver in 1889. They added branches in Victoria and Nelson in the 1890s and remained in business until the mid-1920s. Their bottles and ginger beers are highly collectable Their flagship label was called Red Hand Brand.  

This bottle was salvaged during the demolition of the Pantages Theatre in Vancouver a couple of years ago, very scarce and maybe even that this version of label was ever known by collectors prior. There are some diamond shaped Thorpe labels which exist.  They ran quite a range of flavours.  We'll likely come back to Thorpe & Co. in future.


And here is the other sign at Heritage Village. Orange Crush was sold in Vancouver from near the end of World War One, with their plant or warehouse located in Gastown. Ads in the local newspapers up thru the 1930s featured Lemon Crush and Lime Rickey as well as the flagship Orange Crush. 



BC's old bottles, ginger beers & syphons...

If you love old bottles from British Columbia, then you really must check out these great sites (thanks you guys for putting them up!);   Just highlight and right click:
     1.  http://www.theouthouse.ca
     2.  http://members.shaw.ca/limebay/
     3.  http://oldstuff.ca/Antique_B.C.html


Now, some stuff from the old newspapers for today's date....

1 comment:

  1. Hi, I just thought that I would confirm that the Orange Crush and Thorpes Lemonade signs actually are reproductions as I am the one who painted them for the Burnaby Village Museum. Nice to see they are getting out there :)
    Cheers!
    Carly Bouwman

    ReplyDelete