By Matthew M. Thomas
When thinking of iconic symbols or popular images related to the maple syrup industry, one that quickly comes to mind is the glass flask shaped syrup bottle with the little round handle on the neck. Use of this bottle is unique to the maple industry and is instantly associated with pure maple syrup. About ten years ago a blog post claimed that the appearance or continued presence of the small handle on the neck of this bottle was a hold-over or an artifact of past designs for syrup jugs. Such elements are something known as a skeuomorph, “a retained but no longer functional stylistic feature.” The same Brooklyn Brainery blog writer went on to say “that the handles are a remnant from when most jars were large earthenware containers. The handle’s useful when you’re carrying five pounds of liquid, but not so much when you can easily grab the whole bottle in the palm of your hand.”
Perhaps, a better explanation comes from Jean-François Lozier, a Curator at the Canadian Museum of History, who was quoted online in a Canadian Reader’s Digest article to say, “maple syrup companies weren’t so much retaining an old pattern of a jug as reinventing it and wanting to market their product as something nostalgic.” Lozier, went on to add, “they were tying in the image of maple syrup with their product and the image that people still had of those crocks in the 19th-century.”
While it is true that the little handles on the bottles have the appearance of being something of a holdover or throwback design element that was intended to show a connection to bottles and jugs of the past, the fact is that we really do not know why the bottle was designed with a little handle. What we do know is who first designed and manufactured that bottle, and by what company and when the bottle was first used for selling maple syrup. Brooks D. Fuerst of Sylvania, Ohio, was awarded with the design patent (USD162147) for the bottle in February 1951, after applying for the patent in June of 1949.
Brooks Fuerst (1905-1998) was an experienced designer of glass bottles and jars for food and liquid packaging and worked extensively with the Owens-Illinois Glass Company and the Libbey Glass Company, both in Toledo, Ohio, a place that is sometimes called the Glass Capital of the World.
The design for the syrup flask with the little handle on the neck was given the uninspiring title of “jug or the like” and it should be noted that the shape of the small handle on the original design was not actually rounded, but was more angular with two sharp corners. Brooks Fuerst assigned the patent to the Owens-Illinois Glass Company, either through sale, contract, or as an employee of the company.
The Fuerst flask was first used in 1950 by the Cary Maple Sugar Company of St. Johnsbury, Vermont in 2-ounce, 8-ounce, and 24-ounce sizes. At that time, the Cary company used the flask to bottle two kinds of syrup. One was their Cary’s 100% Pure Maple Syrup, the other was their Highland Brand blended syrup, a mixture of cane and maple syrup.
Prior to the introduction of the Cary’s brand pure maple syrup in 1948, the Cary Maple Sugar Company had used the Highland brand for bottling pure maple syrup since 1919. Highland brand blended syrup continued in use to the mid-1960s and appears to have been discontinued after the Childs-Fred Fear Company sold the Cary’s brand to HCA-Doxsee Foods in 1966. The Cary’s brand of maple syrup continues to be sold to this day by B & G Foods.
The Cary Maple Sugar Company also used the 8-ounce Fuerst flask from 1953 to 1957 to sell their unique “Maple Maker” a highly concentrated maple syrup in which one ounce of concentrate mixed with water and refined white sugar would produce 16 ounces of maple flavored table syrup. This product was aimed at a cost-conscious buyer that wanted to enjoy “home-made” maple flavored syrup at a fraction of the cost of 100% pure maple syrup.
This was not the first design for a maple syrup bottle by a Fuerst. In fact, Brooks Fuerst’s older brother Edwin W. Fuerst (1903-1988) designed a similar bottle over 15 years earlier. It should be noted that, then and to this day, design patents were protected for 14 years.
With Edwin W. Fuerst’s earlier design, the patent was applied for in December 1932 before obtaining former approval in February 1933. Like with the 1951 syrup flask, the 1933 design patent (USD89301) was assigned to the manufacturer, Owens-Illinois Glass Company. Also, like the 1951 design, the first maple syrup company to use the design was the Cary Maple Sugar Company, this time in 2, 8, 12, and 24-ounce sizes. Edwin Fuerst, like his younger brother, was an experienced commercial artist that lived in Toledo and worked closely with the Owens-Illinois and Libbey Glass companies. Like Brooks Fuerst, Edwin was awarded dozens of design patents for artistic glass containers as well as attractive cut glass tableware from the 1930s to the 1950s.
The design of Edwin Fuerst’s 1933 syrup bottle, was titled “design for a jug.” It had a rounder shape to the body than the 1951 bottle and also featured a virtually identical, small, seemingly useless angled handle at the neck. The 1933 bottle featured a thick rectangular base that made it much heavier and more stable than the later more oval flask design. In contrast, the later 1951 flask features a series of short decorative vertical flutes or concave scallops near the base which were absent from the earlier bottle.
It is not known for sure, but it appears that the Cary Company may have had exclusive rights to use both the 1933 and the 1951 designs during the beginning years of the manufacturing of these bottles. However, we do know that Quebec Maple Products, LTD out of Lennoxville, Quebec, also used this design as early as 1935 with their Old Colony brand syrup. Quebec Maple Products, LTD was owned by Robert Boright who had a close history with the Cary Company, first as the manager of their Quebec plant, then as the temporary company president following the death of George Cary in 1931.
In fact, considering that the 1933 design was in the works and initially submitted for a patent in 1932 during the period that Boright oversaw the Cary Company operations, it is possible that it was Boright’s idea and initiative to introduce the new bottle.
When Boright left the Cary company and started his own Quebec Maple Products, LTD in 1933, he certainly had the inside scoop on the availability of the new design. And as far as can be seen, Quebec Maple Products, LTD only used the 1933 bottle for sale of their syrup within Canada, so they likely would not have been competing with the Cary company in the US or violating exclusivity agreements or US patent laws. Quebec Maple Products LTD continued to use the 1933 round bottle design well into the 1960s with their Old Colony and Old Tyme Brand syrups.
The 1933 Fuerst bottle curiously resembles another bottle introduced in the 1930s, that of Little Brown Jug syrup out of St. Louis, Missouri. When Little Brown Jug blended syrup was introduced in 1921 or 1922, it originally came in a ceramic container shaped like a thick round disc on its side with a large loop handle on the shoulder. That design (USD61415) was patented by Joseph Klein in 1922. Around 1934 the Little Brown Jug Products Company shifted to a brown glass bottle in a design that was similar to their earlier ceramic design, with the addition of some notable differences, which happened to make their glass jug very similar to the 1933 round jug of Fuerst, such as a round loop handle on the neck and a thick glass ring or ridge at the juncture of the neck and shoulder. Surprisingly, the glass version of the Little Brown Jug, which only appears in advertisements from 1934 onward, is embossed with the design patent number of their earlier, and different, ceramic jug. One would think the Little Brown Jug company would have also obtained a patent on their new, slightly modified, glass design, unless they were concerned with accusations of copying Fuerst and instead wanted to reply on the precedent of their earlier design patent. It is also possible that Fuerst did the design for the glass version of the Little Brown Jug, and a design patent was never applied for. So far, research has yet to uncover a patent specific to the 1930s design of the Little Brown Jug.
Interestingly, a check of the 1926 and the 1933 catalogs for the Owens- Illinois Glass Company shows the same reinforced ridge or ring at the neck was standard design element for loop handled bottles and jugs at that time.
Use of the 1951 Fuerst bottle by the maple industry in 1960s and 1970s was primarily limited to the large packing companies with national sales and shelf space in grocery chains. It was rarely offered for sale in the catalogs of maple equipment dealers. It wasn’t until the 1980s, with the growing availability and appreciation of specialty glass containers that the flask bottle became a popular option with individual maple producers. By the mid-1990s, the handle design evolved from an angular shape to its current rounded form, finalizing the shape we easily identify today as a symbol of real maple syrup.