The 49th National Antique Bottle & Collectables Show is coming to Dunedin next weekend.
More than 150 exhibitors from across New Zealand and Australia will showcase private collections.
Among the curios will be rare stone jars tied to the city’s 19th- and early 20th-century breweries.
Dunedin collector Stephen Tarasiewicz focuses on jars used by local brewing companies from about the 1880s.
Powley & Keast was a local bottler in Hope St, which handled all bottling for Speight’s Brewery.
Large barrels were delivered to Powley’s, which decanted them into ceramic jars ranging from two to five gallons.
Households and commercial outlets such as hotels and pubs used the refillable jars, fitted with a tap to pour beer.
"They have all got little screw caps, so when they poured themselves a beer, they could lock it up and the gas would stay pretty right."
A draught beer such as Speight’s back then was not as "fizzy" as it is now, with a higher concentration of hops.
"Preservatives in those days were about the amount of hops that you would put in the beer."
The same style of jar was also used by breweries such as J. R. Briggs’ Standard Brewery in Caversham, Wm Strachan & Co Victoria Brewery in Pitt St and McGavin & Co Union Brewery in Duke St.
Each jar carried the brewery’s name and advertising such as beer styles and awards won.
The jars could be returned for refilling, but labels warned they were to be filled only with the named brewery’s beer.
"They used to have wars between the breweries and quite often McGavin’s or Strachan’s would grind each other’s embossing out and put their label on the bottles," Mr Tarasiewicz said.
"So as a collector, you would find all these ground-off bottles going, ‘what is this all about?’ so they were quite competitive."
The ceramic jars continued to be used into the 20th century until concerns about hygiene emerged.
"They went to glass flagons or, you know, they started off with the aluminium kegs and things like that."
Mr Tarasiewicz began collecting at about age 10 and he likes the social history behind items.
"You always think about ‘where has this thing travelled?’."
"A lot of it is collecting for the history of it.
"I’m really obviously passionate about beer. I used to brew beer, drink a lot of beer, but not so much these days."
Mr Tarasiewicz will share highlights from his collection at the 49th National Antique Bottle & Collectables Show, coming to Dunedin for the first time since 2008.
As well as exploring the collections, visitors can buy items and attend an auction.
There will be a wide range of collectables including goldfields artefacts, general store jars, early cameras and autographs of movie stars from the 1930s and 1940s.
"So there are some really rare sort of historical things."
Show information
Saturday and Sunday
September 27 and 28
10 to 4pm both days
Edgar Centre, Portsmouth Dr
Hosted by the Otago Antique Bottle & Collectables Club
