Introducing you to the Board Members of the 2024-2026 Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors.
 |
Michael Seeliger, President, grew up in Monona, Wisconsin, and still lives within 20 miles of his hometown. He married his wife, Alice, in 1969, and together they have collected bottles since the 1960s. They started by collecting ruby red Schlitz beer bottles but soon got hooked on older bottles, especially Warner’s when Mike came across a dump containing only Warner bottles. Mike and Alice wrote the book H. H. Warner His Company & His Bottles in 1974 and work on a continuously updated e-book expanding the original publication. Mike is a professional chemist and chemical/hazardous materials consultant. Semi-retired, they attend numerous shows traveling in their RV whenever possible. They were instrumental in the founding and development of the South Central Wisconsin Bottle Club in the 1970s and have been members of the Federation since then. They have two sons and five grandkids. Mike collects examples of historical bottles, medicines, figural bitters, Warner bottles and works passionately with Mike and Kathie Craig in the development of their Warner & Dr. Craig collections. |
| Position Vacant, FOHBC Vice President, Position open and looking to fill the position. | |
 |
Stephen R. Jackson, FOHBC Director-at-Large, is a native of Virginia and lives with his family in Suffolk, Virginia. He started collecting bottles in the mid-1970s focusing on cures and remedies and ultimately focusing on Warner’s Safe Remedies bottles and advertising. He has written numerous articles on H. H. Warner and the history of Warner’s Safe Cures and administers the Warner’s Safe Cure Blog and the Facebook Warner’s Safe Cure Group. Steve graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in Government with distinction and received his law degree from the University of Richmond. He has been a full-time practicing attorney since 1988 specializing in products liability and general litigation, wills and estates and landlord tenant litigation. He is the principal in the Law Offices of Stephen R. Jackson, PLLC and has served on the boards of numerous bar associations and foundations. He is an avid runner, triathlete and cyclist. |
 |
Alice J. Seeliger, FOHBC Secretary, has been in the background of the bottle-collecting world, supporting Michael in his hobby, since the early 70s. Professionally, she has been the right-hand assistant of a Bank Manager, Marketing and Sales Director of a Consulting Firm, President of an Asbestos Abatement Company, and owner of a small Desktop Publishing, Marketing Consulting, and Graphics Design business. For the past 15 years, she has managed the legal paperwork necessary to transport and dispose of hazardous waste for small companies in the Midwest. “Full retirement doesn’t seem to be in my genes, but I keep trying!” Alice has been President of the Oregon Area Chamber of Commerce, Oregon Preschool Inc., and Oregon Rotary Club and served on numerous educational and political boards. Most recently, she stepped forward to fill a need for a proofreader for the newly combined Antique Bottle & Glass Collector magazine. |
 |
Kathie Craig, FOHBC Treasurer, lives in Campbell, California and has been married to Mike Craig for 40+ years. She is the mother of four grown children and a grandmother of six. Kathie started collecting bottles when she started working for Mike’s father, Jack Craig, in 1987. She is still CFO and running his companies along with her husband to this day. She was also co-owner and CFO of their construction company for 40 years. She has been the president of the San Jose Bottle Club since 2000. For 28 years, she co-owned and ran multiple drag racing teams with her family. Still passionately collects Warners, Dr. Craig, inks and Owl Drug bottles and especially loves antiquing when she and her husband travel in their motor home. |
 |
Craig Cassetta, FOHBC Marketing Director, is a native Californian. He grew up and attended schools in Willows, California, and completed his master’s degree at UC Berkeley. He works for the state of California as a regional manager for an adoption office that serves families in northern California and has worked in adoptions since 2004. Craig always loved exploring and reading about the development of the American West. A.B. Guthrie and Elmore Leonard are two of his favorite authors. His first memory of collecting is gathering rocks and polishing them when he was a child. His curiosity about the West growing up was fed through book reading, exploring caves and searching for arrowheads while on camping trips. During summers in college, he worked as a stream surveyor in national forests. He loved the experience of seeing what was around the next bend in the water—no intact bottles were ever discovered, unfortunately! He is a member of the 49er Historical Bottle Club and his collecting focus is gold rush bottles. He also enjoys collecting movie posters and glass fishing floats. |
 |
Elizabeth Meyer, FOHBC Business Manager, is a native and proud Texan living in Houston. She has a love for antiques, collectibles, and especially is passionate about her horses, and enjoys spending time with her daughter and three grandchildren. Elizabeth has worked professionally at FMG Design for the past 24+ years in various positions, including project management, information technology, accounting, human resources, quality control, and now Sr. Vice President. She loves working with people, traveling with family, and enjoys going to bottle shows and looking for unique small antiques and holy water bottles. |
 |
Brian Bingham, FOHBC Membership Director, was born in Washington, DC, and raised in suburban Maryland. Brian is retired from what was, at the time, the new field of Electronic Engineering. He immediately went to work for Sperry Univac, installing and maintaining large and small computer systems at major government agencies across Washington DC, including several years as part of the NASA Shuttle program. He moved to Southern California in the early 1980s following the shuttle incident. After moving to California, he transitioned into a career as a supply chain analyst before returning to electronic engineering with United Technologies. Brian is an active member of the Sons of the American Revolution, Eagle Chapter, the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, William Pittenger chapter, and the Friends of Heritage Park (a historic village in Oceanside, CA, with original Civil War and Victorian buildings including a jail, saloon, mercantile, school, newspaper and doctor’s office, and two homes all restored and maintained by the Friends). Brian enjoys living history and can reenact virtually any period in costume and manner through Medieval, Revolutionary, Mountain Man, Civil War, and Victorian periods. He is passionate about genealogy and has traced his ancestry back 12 generations. His lifelong love of history was inherited from his parents, who would take their sons on weekend trips to Civil War battlefields, the Corning Glass Museum, and Jamestown, where he saw glass being blown. He began collecting as a boy, going antiquing with his mother who instilled in him a love for glass. His first large collection was beer cans. The historical flask and bottle collection was born with a lucky flask find at an estate sale. He managed to transfer his passion for glass to his partner of over 30 years, Cheryl, who has a growing collection of her own, primarily colognes, perfumes, and scents. Brian has two adult daughters living in California and is looking forward to seeing what their futures hold. |
 |
Ferdinand Meyer V, FOHBC Special Projects Director, has a BFA in Fine Art and Graphic Design from the Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design. He is also a principal and founder of FMG Design, a nationally recognized design consultation firm. Ferdinand is a passionate collector of American historical glass specializing in bitters bottles, color runs, and related classic figural bottles. He also operates the Peachridge Glass website and maintains the design and brand standards for the FOHBC. Ferdinand is married to Elizabeth Requejo Meyer and lives in Houston, Texas with their daughter and three wonderful grandchildren. The Meyer family is also very involved in Quarter Horses, antiques, and early United States postage stamps. Ferdinand served for three 2-year terms as President of the FOHBC and is a director of the FOHBC Virtual Museum. He was inducted into the FOHBC Hall of Fame in 2021. |
 |
John O’Neill, FOHBC Director-at-Large, is a California native, born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the most recent president of the FOHBC and president of the San Jose Antique Bottle Collectors Association, and a prior officer of the Peninsula Bottle Collectors. John has had a strong interest in bottle collecting since age ten and is currently collecting San Francisco saloon material, including pumpkinseed flasks, coffin flasks, and memorabilia—all pre-prohibition. He wrote his first book on California pottery and stoneware and was a presenter on the subject at the 2016 Sacramento National Convention & Expo. He has been married to his wife, Cheri, for 38 years and has two grown children. John is the managing director for the San Francisco office of Risk Strategies Company, a Boston-based Insurance Brokerage. |
 |
Richard Siri, FOHBC Director-at-Large, is known for his extensive Western bottle collections, having amassed one of the most complete Western bitters bottle collections, as well as extensive collections of whiskeys, Hostetter’s Stomach Bitters, and U.S.A. Hospital Dept. bottles, among other things. He is always willing to share his knowledge on his favorite subjects, and that knowledge has found a public place inside many books, articles, and exhibitions about antique bottles. He has held several offices within the Federation, most notably as president in 2008. Richard chaired the recent FOHBC Reno 2022 National Antique Bottle Convention, co-chaired the FOHBC 2012 Reno National Antique Bottle Expo and the FOHBC 2016 Sacramento National Antique Bottle Convention & Expo. He is also a major supporter and an active member of the Northwestern Bottle Collectors Association. In 2009, Richard first brought forth the concept of developing the FOHBC Virtual Museum. He now serves on the museum’s Board of Directors, and he, along with his wife Beverley, is a major financial contributor to the museum. Richard was inducted into the FOHBC Hall of Fame in 2018. |
 |
Henry Hecker, FOHBC Midwest Region Director, has been collecting pre-1910 Wisconsin bottles and utilitarian pottery since 1970 and is a charter member of the Milwaukee Antique Bottle & Advertising Club. Once an avid digger and lake mucker, today, he primarily searches flea markets, shows, shops, and house sales for new discoveries. A former marketing executive, Henry spends “retirement” with his wife, Diane, in Mukwonago, Wisconsin. He is a dedicated researcher of the history of his bottles and pottery, serving as program director for the Milwaukee antique bottle club and President of the Mukwonago Historical Society & Museum. He is leading an effort to expand and update the local museum and is one of the three contributors to the informational website on Wisconsin-made earthenware and stoneware, madefromclay.org, the undisputed authority on Wisconsin 19th-century potters. Henry and Diane have two sons, John and Erik, who are convinced Dad is certifiably insane because of his hobby. |
 |
Charles (Charlie) Martin, Jr., FOHBC Northeast Region Director, lives in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, with his wife Jane. They have three grown children from a blended family that lives in Old Lyme, Connecticut, San Diego, California and Georgetown, Massachusetts. Charlie has been a collector his entire life with baseball cards, comics, coins, stamps, specimen seashells, and especially antique bottles. He is a past president of the Merrimack Antique Bottle Club of Massachusetts. A highlight of his tenure as president was getting Carlyn Ring to speak at a club meeting while she was still compiling her For Bitters Only book. He was fortunate to have several unlisted bitters in his collection that she did not know about. His primary focus in collecting is Clarke’s Vegetable Sherry Wine Bitters. He has been working on a run of these bottles with all sizes and variants for many years. Just when it appeared that he might complete the run of sizes and variants, Ring, Ham and Meyer issued their Bitters Bottles Supplement 2, which included two previously unknown variants! Back to the hunt. Charlie also collects all ephemeral material related to bitters products: trade cards, handbills, almanacs, labels, invoices, and letterheads, to mention a few categories. Label-only bitters are also a favorite of his collecting passion. Charlie retired from his position as Superintendent of Schools twenty years ago and notes that the issues he was dealing with back then are still the same issues his friends and colleagues are wrestling with two decades later. Charlie is assembling an Atwood’s Jaundice Bitters bottles group for his nine-year-old grandson, who lives in Georgetown, Massachusetts. He believes that those of us in the bottle-collecting hobby must create an opportunity for the next generation of “guardians of the glass” to ensure our wonderful hobby survives. |
 |
Tom Lines, FOHBC Southern Region Director, started bottle collecting in September of 1975 when he and a work buddy took off a day of work to go dig in an old Birmingham, Alabama dump. Tom, born into a family of collectors, had grown up collecting Native American artifacts in Southern Maryland, collecting coins and miscellaneous odd ball things that caught his eye. Over most of his collecting career, bottles and southern stoneware captured his energy…”and his wallet” he recounts. The Alabama Bottle Collectors Society was the first club he joined in early 1976 and their Spring show opened the doors to the breadth of the antique bottle hobby. His early focus was collecting Alabama “pre-crown top” soda bottles and that lasted 40 years before selling his collection to a friend. Also during that time, his eyes were drawn to colorful bottles from the 1800s including flasks, bitters, inks, medicines, Pitkins, mineral waters, colognes and a sprinkling of blown glass. In 2002, Tom began adding a completely new category to his shelves; flasks and decanters made by the German porcelain company Schafer & Vater. These are whimsical bottles made during the first quarter of the twentieth century and sold into the American markets to bars, cafes, restaurants and liquor dealers and used as giveaways to their customers. Tom served in all positions of the Alabama Bottle Collectors Society, including show chairman multiple times. He also served the North Carolina Bottle Collectors Club when he lived in Charlotte in similar capacities over a seven year time span before moving back to Alabama. Tom served the FOHBC as First Vice President under Steve Ketchum way back when the name was still the Federation of Historical Bottle Clubs. Tom typically sets up at at six to eight bottle shows a year and he’s been doing this since 1978 or so. For many years, Tom also put together educational displays the last ten shows he chaired back in Birmingham where he provided two lighted cases for joint displays of theme Alabama bottles and stoneware. |
 |
Eric McGuire, FOHBC Western Region Director, is a California native who has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area most of his life. He attended local schools and completed his formal education at San Francisco State University (MA 1973). Eric entered the field of environmental planning and retired from a 30-year career in domestic water supply in 2008. He began his bottle-collecting interest in 1960 and along with digging and otherwise acquiring bottles, Eric has always been an avid student of all aspects of glassmaking as well as a researcher of the history of the people who produced the bottles. Beginning in the mid-1960s, his name can be found in many articles relating to bottles and glass. Eric’s primary interest has been focused on the geographical area of the Western U.S. He is a life member of the FOHBC and lives in Petaluma, California, with his wife, Lisa. |
