In lead-up to National Beer Lover's Day, 7 Sep 2023 (that would be tomorrow), here is a gorgeous beer stein and one of the favorites in my collection. There's also a cool story attached to it...
..sooo, after having been stationed in Germany for nine years, getting married, and having kids, in 1991 it was time to come back to the States. The following year we managed to go back to Germany to visit relatives. Now, Bettina is from the Westerwald, a region famous for it's ceramicware - especially their blue-gray salt glazed products. Having been with me for enough years she also knew how much I enjoyed collecting beer steins, mugs, and ceramicware in general. We loved visiting the region's small mom-&-pop ceramic maker's in places like Mogendorf, Rahmsbach-Baumbach, Höhr-Grenzhausen, even visiting the Rastal museum in Höhr-Grenzhausen.
It's 1992, one short year after leaving Germany, and we return as a family to visit Bettina's relatives. While there she happens to mention another ceramic maker. She can't remember the name but she knows where it is. And so we drive about 45 minutes to the town of Sessenbach. As we pull up it's apparent that we ended up at the Gerz factory! Holy cow! Really? And I'm like, "Bettina, why didn't you tell me about this while we were still living here?" For beer stein stein collector's Gerz was the Numero Uno, Prima, World Class maker of the coolest steins ever! LOL And here we are at their factory! The focus of this trip was not to tour the factory but to see if there was a store or something selling the company's products and there was - but here's the catch. On the corner of the factory grounds - basically outside the fence that I remember - was a small stand-alone building which sold factory seconds featuring the products that didn't pass the final inspection for retail sale at outlets all over the world. Hmmm, "okay" I'm thinking to myself. "we can at least check it out".
As we walk inside the place is lined with shelves and there are free-standing counters in the middle, all filled with a variety of ceramicware. At first it was a tad disappointing and I could see where a lot of the products had blemishes or mistakes, like steins missing lids, poor paint jobs, chips, etc. But after a while sorting through the mountains of steins and mugs I noticed something very peculiar: I'm looking at a lot of products and simply cannot tell what the heck was wrong with them! They look every bit as good as anything I had seen in shops throughout Germany! There were several steins I know would normally have brass inserts on the bottom - I knew that because I had seen the exact same stein in shops - but in this Gerz factory seconds store, the indentation on the bottom of the stein had been filled in and there was no brass insert. Otherwise the thing was perfect. That was one great aspect to the visit. The other? PRICES - Good Lord were they cheap! I bought enough to fill one of our carry-on luggage bags and I do not regret lugging that heavy sucker around airports! hahahahaha
Now, onto to today's featured stein. It's an attractive vessel that I have named the "Beer Hall" stein and measures 10 5/8" (27.11cm) H to the top of the lid. I simply cannot tell why this would have failed any quality control inspection and can only surmise that perhaps some of the colors were off. Enjoy! Opa Fritz
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