© 2014-2024 Lewis Williams
1950s Chandy bottle - (correction: now bottles! see below*)
This bottle (pictured below left with one our Chandy lions) is one of the rarest items in our collection - we've certainly never even seen another one like it. [Update July 2017: This is still true to an extent, but scroll down to see the update below!]
The bottle is undoubtedly a rare survivor and is all the more special because it has a ‘label’ that is printed directly onto the bottle (see detail below right) rather than having a paper label stuck on. The bottle-printed label is very similar to the earliest paper bottle label that we have (with no indication of the volume of contents, no indication of alcoholic content, no indication of ingredients and, of course, no expiry date or anything like that). However, the address given on the bottle’s label is, for some reason, Chislehurst Mineral Waters Company, Kent rather than the more familiar Chandy Bottling Company, London E.C.1.
*Update July 2017
We’re delighted to have heard from Lucy Hay and Reef Elgie who have a hobby of bottle hunting in the countryside near where they live, and got in touch with us over one particular bottle find they recently unearthed. Yes – you guessed it – it’s a Chandy bottle, which has somehow survived buried for fifty-plus years. It’s a remarkable find and we’re very grateful to Lucy and Reef for getting in touch and enabling us to acquire it to preserve for posterity in the Chandy Museum collection.
The bottle is intact with no cracks or chips and, like the other Chandy bottle of a similar vintage we already had (the one above), it has its label printed directly onto the bottle. (Of course, had it had a paper label that wouldn’t have survived the elements at all and we’d never know it as a Chandy bottle!)
This bottle’s directly-printed label has worn and faded a little over the years, but most of its wording can made out fairly clearly with the naked eye. Unfortunately, that faded wording isn't too easy to photograph - but it definitely reads: "Chandy", "TRADE MARK", "THE ORIGINAL CHANDY", "BRITISH" and around each side edge of the label "THE CHANDY BOTTLING COMPANY, LONDON E.C.1".
This means the bottle is different to the one above in three distinct ways:
1. It includes the words “TRADE MARK” under the word “Chandy”, suggesting this bottle is of slightly later vintage than the other one.
2. It carries the more familiar London address and not the Chislehurst address.
3. It’s a bigger sized bottle - clearly weights and measures weren’t much of an issue in the 1950s!
The photo gallery below includes a few views of the bottle in an attempt to capture the bottle's lettering, but the pictures don't really improve on Lucy's original photo of the bottle, which we've included here above with many thanks. The first picture in the gallery does, though, show both bottles together and shows how the bottle-hunt-find bottle is that bit larger than its companion.
