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June 28, 2011

Schenley’s Patented Jar Mystery

SchenleyPatentedJarDesign

Recently I saw a design patent for a jar and it struck me that the jar wasn’t much bigger than its cap. The patent didn’t specify what it was designed to contain. I was thinking it would be funny if this jar contained something whose directions called for using “one capful” of the product.

The strange thing is, the patent was assigned to distillers, Shenley Industries. (Note: Paul Rand’s design for Shenley’s Gin packaging above, left)

SchenleyJar

Assuming the jar didn’t contain a single shot of distilled spirits, I wondered, “What was it meant to hold?”

(Mystery solved, after the fold…)

Inhaler

Another patent reveals that this jar was meant to contain powdered penicillin and to be attached as a refill to a patented inhaler.

Distilling and the making of penicillin seem quite unrelated, industrially and in every other way. Yet Schenley Industries has put the two together. Schenley’s subsidiary, Schenley Laboratories, Inc., is engaged in research, development and production of such antibiotic drugs as penicillin and streptomycin. The two fields are actually not so far apart as would at first appear. Schenley Industries has a backlog of experience and knowledge of the beneficial bacteria and molds. This is the foundation both of the ancient brewers’ art and the ultramodern science of which penicillin and other “magic drugs” are examples.

Big Business: A New Era
by David Eli Lilienthal, 1952

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

 

 

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