Tankard with lid 1898
Richard Riemerschmid DE
Villeroy & Boch DE
stoneware, tin
bequeathed by Norbert Havermans, 1987
In Bavaria, beer has been more popular than wine since the Middle Ages. In cities in the late nineteenth century, clients of different classes came together in so-called beer temples. It is around this time that the Munich designer Richard Riemerschmid blew new life into the secular industry of stoneware from the region of the Westerwald. German critics preferred his tankards and jugs to those of Henry van de Velde, even though the latter enjoyed a lot of prestige in Germany. Riemerschmid knew how to translate the specificity of the local materials and techniques into a contemporary user-friendly industrial product. This copy, whose whiplash motif on the handle runs over the body, is remarkably refined. Perhaps it only served as a decorative object or as a collectible for the higher class.
SOURCES
Freyja Hartzell, A ghost in the machine age: the Westerwald stoneware industry and German design reform 1900-1914, in: The Journal of Modern Craft, vol. 2 (2009), nr. 3, pp. 251-277;
Met dank aan Freyja Hartzell;
Jutta Hofmann-Beck en Konstantin Lannert (Münchner Stadtmuseum).