Revisiting the 1996 JMM Expansion

A blog post by fall collections intern Carlyn Thomas. To read more posts by and about interns, click here.

During the expansion of the Jewish Museum of Maryland in 1996 there were many collected and forgotten artifacts and objects that can from the grounds beneath the land surrounding the museum and synagogues.  My fellow Urban Archaeology intern, Molly, and I have been taking a look at these forgotten objects, cataloging, cleaning and photographing them. Most of the materials we handle are different fragments of bottles, various glass, ceramics and metal, as well as some unidentified objects.

Bottle from the Bartholomay Brewing Company.
Bottle from the Bartholomay Brewing Company.

My favorite finds were the glass beer and soda bottles with embossing on them from various old Baltimore breweries that I dated to 1910 from researching the year of establishment of the name of the brewery. Some names that turned up frequently were the Bauernschmidt Co, American Brewing Co, Global Brewing Co, and Bartholomay Brewing Co. Often, the name would not be embossed, but just a monogram of a letter, and by using various websites we researched what company the particular monogram belonged to. There are also a number of small medicine glass bottles from local pharmacies.

Fragment of a bottle from the Bauernschmidt Brewing Company.
Fragment of a bottle from the Bauernschmidt Brewing Company.

Now that we have successfully assigned accession numbers to every object and added it into our database, and now we have begun the process of washing, labeling and photographing them! Woo!

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