l Our quest has so far yielded nothing of relevance regarding our unlisted shot glass.  So what next?  Well, luckily for us, the old liquor wholesalers, distillers and rectifiers produced copious amount of advertising materials, much of which included information that can we can use in our quest to learn more about a company.  The most obvious vehicle for advertising was a bottle; bottle labels not provide us with information about brand names, they often contain an address also. 

But bottles are only the beginning - there were also jugs, flasks, decanters, corkscrews, stirrers, plates, teapots, clocks, thermometers, calendars, cardboard and glass signs, bar displays, tip trays, ash trays, beer trays, mirrors to hang on the wall, pocket mirrors, penknives, paperweights, playing cards, bag handles, business cards, trade cards, billheads, letterheads, flyers, drink tokens, and shot glasses.  I'm sure I missed something - the bottom line is that they could brand it, they did (within certain legal limits).

So what's available from our friends Humphrey and Martin?

There's a decanter with the name "Bouquet Whiskey" etched in gold (not shown), there's a nice jug with "Bouquet Whiskey" on it that also shows the brand owners on it.  There's a corkscrew, again with brand and owner.  There are undoubtedly other items, but these are the only ones that I've run across as of now.

All of these items have appeared for auction on eBay, so if you know you're interested in shots from a particular city or area of the country, it pays to search eBay for items with "Philadelphia Whiskey" or "Philadelphia Advertising" in their description (using Philadelphia as an example).  You don't have to bid on or buy the items, just take a note of anything you see in the item description or the photo.  You may also want to keep a copy of the photo (click on the photo using the right mouse button, and then choose "Save Picture As" to save to a convenient location) or ask the seller to describe more fully text that you can't quite make out from the picture.

The most useful relic from Messrs Humphrey & Martin turned up at a "local" bottle show.   I had to drive out into the Pennsylvania boonies for this one - a trip that lead me 2 hours north of Philly.  When I finally arrived, the show turned out to be three sellers huddled in the corner of a large and very-recently-used cow barn. 

One seller actually did have a shot glass, but it was a Hayner, and a faded, cracked one at that.   The second table contained only bottles, the third cardboard trays filled with old postcards, plus a couple of binders.  The binders turned out to contain a collection of old letterheads and billheads and among them was one from Humphrey & Martin.  It was tagged at $7 but the seller dropped the price  to  $3 without my even asking -- and it was mine.