Saturday, July 25, 2009

Metzler Motivation for Everyone








Hermann Metzler is listed in the San Francisco Directory as a Bottler of Beer in the year 1887 only. His place of business is listed as 2110 Taylor Street, San Francisco, CA. This is a little pre-pomona national bottle show motivation for all of us to realize that the white whale is still out there. The amber is from my collection as well as the lime green coloration. The top left green photo is a more true respresentation of the actual color, the the lower right photo shows the embossing better. This piece was dug by Vince Sierras in Oakland, CA and he said it got his blood pumping so much he dug the backyard of the home throughly to see if he could find any othe pieces, but it was not to be. There was a Charles Metlzer listed as propreitor of the Golden Gate Brewery as early as 1862 at 713 Greenwich through 1881 at 717 Greenwich, which probably changed as a result of error or street renumbering. A great bottle with lots of character and appeal, to early beer collectors this says it all with the Eagle sitting on top of the Beer Barrel. I dug a small pit of these all broken in the early 1980's in Cow Hollow on Steiner off of Union Street, and never saved a piece, even though some were fairly whole. There are probably less than ten wholes specimens known of this bottle, I can count four that I know of which includes mine. Let me know if you have one so we can get an accurate representation of how many whole ones exist. Sorry, I have not been posting regularly, but work has been very busy lately, and alas this is a hobby.


3 comments:

  1. What an incredible shard ! What else was in the hole you dug with the busted examples ?

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  2. Andrew,

    The ten or twleve were all broken in a trash pit, and all amber, but this is what dreams are made of and keeps us all in the hunt....

    John

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  3. Charles John the Baptist Metzler was my great grandfather. Hermann was his son. They ran the Golden Gate Brewery for the late part of the 19th century and then became undertakers.

    Charles' daughter Ida married my grandfather George A. Perry.

    I've home brewed a few times and ironically made Golden Gate Brewery labels for them. :-)

    If you ever see another of these Metzler bottles for sale, let me know - I might be interested.

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