An old German figurative beer mug "Knight of the Renaissance". The capacity of the mug is 0.5 liters, the height, including the tin lid, is 24 cm. The mug does not have the mark of the manufacture where it was made. We will determine the affiliation by a number of indirect signs, as well as by the details of the styles used in the design of the product mold.
The first thing that attracts attention is the shape of the neck of the vessel and the lid of the mug. Here we see a mixture of two styles that have gained popularity in Germany in different historical periods. On the one hand, the Bartmannskrug style (translated from German as a mug with the image of a bearded man) was used to form the plot and form. This style was formed around 1550 in the pottery craft towns of the westerwald, in the historical area of the western part of the central German lands. They were round-shaped jugs, the neck of which was made in the form of a bearded man's face. The masters of the 16th century borrowed this image from ancient German epics about a mythical forest man of incredible strength, courage and endurance. At the same time, he was credited with the character of a just defender of the forest and all its inhabitants, including people with pure thoughts. At the same time, he was merciless to all who brought evil and ruin. The lid for such jugs was made of tin and it did not contain any exquisite decoration. She just closed the neck of the vessel.
Shaped circles in the form of human characters from the 19th century are quite another matter. Such mugs became popular in Germany in the second half of the 19th century. They were mostly in the form of monks and Munich children. The lower part of such a beer mug depicted the human body from the legs to the shoulders. The gooseberry was also made of ceramic, but in the form of a character's head. Thus, the human figure consisted of two parts of the mug: the main container for the drink and the lid. In fact, this is the main difference between the more modern style of shaped mugs of the 19th century invented by people from the Bartmannskrug style of the 16th century.
German artists were distinguished by their rich creative imagination when designing jewelry for their products. Nevertheless, they basically adhered to conservative views when it came to observing the canons of artistic genres peculiar to their eras and styles. This factor explains the uniqueness of the design of the shaped mug with jug elements presented to your attention.
The presence of a drain hollow at the neck makes the product unsuitable for drinking, while shaped mugs of the late 19th century in the form of human characters, on the contrary, could be used for their intended purpose and always had a mark on the capacity for this. I must say that Bartmannskrug products appeared in the 16th century exclusively as vessels for transporting and storing beverages. Therefore, their neck was equipped with a special hollow for convenient filling.
An analysis of the products of famous German factories that produced beer jugs and mugs in the second half of the 19th century suggests that the presented product in the form of a "Renaissance Knight" was made by the masters of the Reinhold Merkelbach factory.
The Merkelbach Manufaktur company, better known as Reinhold Merkelbach, was founded in 1843 in the city of Her-Grenzhausen and officially registered in 1845 by Wilhelm Merkelbach (1817-1859). His ancestors had been engaged in pottery in the westerwald since about 1600
, and for this reason, the management of the Reinhold Merkelbach factory made considerable efforts to revive interest in the Bartmannskrug style at the end of the 19th century. As part of this effort, Reinhold Merkelbach has developed and produced a range of reproductions of magnificent 16th-century Bartmannskrug museum exhibits.
At the same time, the Reinhold Merkelbach model range of the 19th century contained quite a few more modern molds of shaped mugs with the image of people, in the form of recognizable objects, as well as owls and animals.
This mug was made in the period 1880-1895. Further, the era of art nouveau and Reinhold Merkelbach's active immersion in it has already begun.
You can watch a video about this mug at the following link: [link]
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