Timothy and Christine Hill Collection at Heckler's

Woodstock, Connecticut, May 26, 2017. One of the most beautiful parts of the country at one of the loveliest times of the year!

Norman C. Heckler & Co. is going to be selling the collection of Timothy and Christine Hill over the course of 2017. The Hill collection of bottles and related antiques was varied and very large, but with definite concentrations in historical flasks and veterinary medicine bottles. The Hill collection sales started on Friday with a large, well-attended live auction in the Heckler barn, which included some unusually fancy lots.

Norm Heckler Sr. gets the auction going in front of his old George S. McKearin, Inc. sign.

Ernie Eldridge, antique dealer and mayor of Windham, Ct,  took over conducting the auction at times.

"Dr. Lesure's Famous Remedies," goony veterinary medicine cabinet. Not really my thing, but apparently that was a $3500 plus 17% buyer's premium plus 6.35% sales tax for a total of $4355.03 and nearly the most expensive item of the sale goony veterinary medicine cabinet.

Radium Radia medicine bottle with contents (brown, not obviously luminescent) and box. Probably not actually an ionizing radiation hazard?

 And here's some of the good stuff:

GI-85 LA FAYETTE COVETRY [sic] C-T / liberty cap pint flask, Hill collection ex Brown collection. Crude, huge bubbles, in fine condition.

GV-9 railroad / eagle pint flask, Coventry Glass Works. Nice green color, good impression in a mold where the embossing is usually pretty lumpy, and it went for cheap.

GVIII-16 sunburst flask. Generally considered a Coventry product, but there is supposedly some evidence from dug shards that it was (also?) made at the Pitkin Glass Works.

GIV-16 masonic arch /eagle flask.

GIV-16 base.

The highlight of the auction was an aquamarine GIV-16 masonic flask, which went for around $5300 with buyer's premium. The manufacturer of these rare and handsome bottles is obscure; it's possibly a Coventry product, but the design of the eagle with banner and oval and the relative frequency of aquamarine examples, suggest that a New Hampshire glass works might be more likely. Norm Heckler commented that he collected GIV-16s when people thought they were from Coventry, but then sold them off when collector opinion shifted to a Keene origin.

The next Heckler online auction (#151), opening July 3, will be a large sale and include a lot more material from the Hill collection. It hasn't been organized into catalogue form yet, but everything was laid out for inspection in the online auction shed, and I spotted some good Connecticut and New England glass:

There are some Coventry ink bottles and early New England utilities in there, along with some half pint Coventry historical flasks.

Pint Coventry railroad and sunburst flasks, Willington eagles and a half pint New London anchor / eagle, in among a whole lot of other stuff.

Westford traveler's companion and sheaf of wheat flasks, with Coventry and Willington eagles, etc. etc.

GI-33 WASHINGTON / JACKSON pint flask, Coventry Glass Works.This was one of the Connecticut bottles that jumped out at me: not common (but a number have suddenly been cropping up in auctions lately), and usually seen in dark, muddy olive colors, not this sort of clear, light "chestnut glass."