Archeology Spring Training - Part One, Mystery in a Glass

Winter is hanging on.  In fact another round of snow is barreling our way from the Dakotas.  This of course is usual for Wisconsin and complicates  "spring training" for archaeology.

This year I have the additional challenge of setting off in May to look not for Roman things but for the archaeology of World War One, things that are a mere century old.  It makes for a different sort of artifacts.

Fortunately my wife helped out.  She pointed me towards several shabby looking boxes in our storage room and said it was time to tidy them up. And as they contained things unearthed at various 19th century locations in my part of the world, it was sort of training for what I will be looking for.

So its time for a series of odd artifacts.

This is a painted stencil beer glass.  Likely they were given away to bars that served the brewery's product.  What can be made out easily here is the main script which on the left hand side reads: EULBER...  The other fragment is harder to make out but certainly ends in ...ERS    There is a nice logo with EB in the center and down below are the letters ...TY and the tail end of the geographic identification, which is unhelpfully just WIS.

This gave me a few difficulties.  Firstly you can't just scrub these up for a better look. Having been a long time in the ground the image is very fragile.  I suspect that short of professional conservation there is no way to rescue these.

I am pretty sure this is from Eulberg Brothers who had a brewery in Portage Wisconsin.  That would fit everything except the ...TY and that might have been a variety of beer.

I have not been able to locate an image of exactly like this from Eulberg so I think this one was an early and rather uncommon specimen.  I have seen auction results for simpler glasses from Eulenberg that went for over $900!  I suppose I should really send the fragments to THIS GUY.

I would so love to do a companion "Forgotten Brewery Caves" entry to wrap this up nice and neat. But alas, alas, while I know where the caves were - on the north side of Silver Lake on the edge of town - there was nothing to be seen when I was there last year.  I'm told that they were later used for boat storage and then eventually demolished in what seems to have been a very professional effort.