~ Santa Claus Steins ~

To welcome the holiday season we take a look at four modern Santa Claus character steins this month.

The Christmas theme is not terribly difficult to find on steins, but these character steins of Santa Claus are particularly festive. They were made in Taiwan for Foxhill in 1993. Note the absence of a pewter ring on the lid; in order that the ring not interfere with the overall design, the pewter tang  was poured directly into a hole made in the ceramic lid. This borrows from a technique which was used over 100 years ago by Girmscheid, among others.

Character steins, made in the shape of the thing they represent, have such diversity that some collections contain nothing else. The best known factories were Schierholz (of Plaue) and E. Bohne Sohne (of Rudolstadt), who both produced steins in porcelain, but many other factories produced character steins in saltglazed stoneware, pottery, pewter or silver. The Münchner Kindl steins are fairly common examples, and we see clowns, monks, nuns, barmaids, sailors, skulls, devils, carved radishes, monkeys, pigs, goats, owls, foxes, barrels, towers, bowling pins, footballs, artillery shells, electric insulators, busts of famous (and not so famous) people, and on and on. One of the more unusual character steins is made to represent a beer stein, complete with overflowing foam!