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Figure 1: Soda water bottle with blob top (photo by George Pledger). |
One of the
pleasures of diving in South Carolina is the diversity of artifacts
found in the area’s rivers and streams.
Many fellow divers
have had their dives "made"by being presented with a fine
example of an early soda water bottle in their collection
bag. Soda water bottles are often called "blob tops"
by divers due to the sturdy construction of the tops of these bottles. It
should be noted that there were many different methods of fashioning tops of
bottles, but between 1840, and the advent of a reliable crown top around 1892,
the blob top was the preferred method (Figure 1). The heavy construction of
these bottles was required to handle the high pressures associated with soda
water manufacture. The earliest of these bottles were blown into simple cup
molds. Later, they were blown into more sophisticated two-piece molds. However,
all can be classified as "blown in
mold, applied lip," or BIMAL, which is a term
used to distinguish this method from "freeblown" or made in "automatic bottling machines," or ABM.
The soda water manufacturers required the bottles
be returnable and reusable. The sealing method progressed from a pressed-in
cork stopper found between 1840 and 1882-5. These were oversized stoppers and
were pressed into the bottle with a lever and then wired down. Being under
considerable pressure when the wire was removed, the bottles went "pop." Hence
the name. Since these "pop bottles" did not travel very well until the
invention of the crown top, the term was not common outside the coastal
counties. In 1882, the reusable, prewired "lightning stopper" was patented and
appeared in local papers around 1885. This was truly a reusable stopper and was
designed so the currently used blob tops could be back fitted. This kept the
start-up cost low, as well as the recurring expense of corks and bottles being
broken when the stoppers were pressed in.
Soda water manufacture started about 1840 in
Charleston. One of the better known of these bottlers was the Kornahrens
family. In 1839, John L. Kornahrens emigrated from Germany with his family and
started a grocery business at 24 Line Street in Charleston. In 1856, he went
into the soda water business with Frederick Steinke, a baker at 43 Society
Street. After the Steinke partnership dissolved in 1857, the Kornahrens family
stayed involved in soda water manufacture and brewing. No evidence of soda
water manufacture by the Kornahrens family can be traced during the Civil War.
However they did continue in the grocery business and did continue to brew beer,
ale, and stout. In 1866, Carl L. Kornahrens started bottling beer and soda
water at 40 Hasel Street in Charleston, and for the next fifty years the "CLK"
trademark was common in coastal South Carolina. Carl L. Kornahrens died on June
1, 1888, and the company continued under his wife, Johanna, and his son, Carl L.
Jr., apparently going out of business in 1914.
