JOHN HARRELL

You may be right about the the swords and crown being heraldic but the question is what do they represent?
I think you can discount that it was made for some member of nobility or royalty. If that were the case I would think the metal would be silver or gilt. The date is important but what it signifies is unknown. The initials are probably of the owner who was not of the nobility or royalty.
Some considerations:
The crown is illustrated on P. 36 of “Heraldry of the World ” by von Volborth. There are two line drawings of crowns with spikes like the one on the stein. Both are described as “Antique or Eastern” crowns with no further information.
The image could represent a battle flag from the middle ages or a shield of the same period.
From the photo of the stein and based on the somewhat indistinct hilts the crossed swords are more in line with 1744 than the middle ages.
Possibly the images represent a cutlery guild that the owner was admitted to in 1744. Perhaps the images represent one of the many such guilds in Europe.
Anyway much the fun in collecting is researching a stein which often leads to a favorable finding and sometimes remains unsolved.