A series of posts on Rhenish Stoneware
#history #archaeology #rhineland #stoneware #steinzeug #retirement
When I retired I decided on a “project” to keep busy and learn and see interesting things. As I live in Cologne, an important medieval trading centre, I had the idea to follow some of the trade goods, ideally by bicycle and taking photos on the way.
The first trading good I followed was stoneware.
- Stoneware was produced close(ish) to where I live
- Several good museums
- And it was nice looking, easy to photograph
Ok, done
In November 2025 I jumped on my bike and visited Frechen to visit the Keramion and see what there was still to see of the stoneware pottery history.
There was a lot, industrial stoneware eg sewage pipes were produced there until quite recently. Of course the medieval stuff was more difficult.
Anyway, this is, what the most “famous” product of Rhenish Stoneware looks like, the Bartmann Krug.
What the visit to the Keramion (a museum for ceramics in Frechen) started to show, is that stoneware is easy to photograph individually, but slightly difficult to capture what makes it interesting besides being pretty.
First question, what is it, and what makes it special?
Stoneware pottery is heated to a much higher temperature and for longer than other types of pottery.
Normal pottery is baked between 600 C to about 1100 C. If you want it water tight, you need to glaze it.
Stoneware is baked between 1200 C and 1300 C. The result is water tight and acid proof as the clay is sintered at these temperatures. It is also more difficult to shatter. These properties explain why high quality sewage pipes are still made from stoneware.
But apart from the improved properties stoneware was also more expensive and more difficult to produce.
To produce stoneware you needed: high quality clay, wood, salt (for the glaze) and customers who were willing to pay more than for simple, everyday, pottery.
You also needed fairly tolerant neighbors, as the salt glazing produced chloric acid, which can’t have been a lot of fun.
In summary:
- high quality clay
- good supply of firewood
- good supply of (cheap) salt
- access to customers who were able and willing to pay more
Starting with the customers, Cologne had been a major trade centre from Roman times and was well connected to markets via the Rhine, but also overland routes like the Via Belgica, the Via Regia, the Hellweg etc.
Trading pottery was also a thing since Roman times and Terra Sigillata wares were produced and traded.
This was a good thing for Cologne potters, but also for potters with access to the Cologne market.
This map shows the main pottery centers.
Stoneware is thought to have originated in Siegburg. Siegburg itself was dominated by Siegburg Abbey, which had been founded by Cologne Archbishop Anno II in 1046.
Siegburg pottery was traded locally, but was also sold via Cologne. The Sieg river was navigable in the Middle Ages and led to the Rhine just a bit south of Cologne.
There is a nice museum in Siegburg, which has a quite nice exhibition on stoneware.
My two museum visits showed that a bit more context would be good. Just visiting the pottery towns and their museums to take pictures of very similar looking (to the lay person) would be quite boring.
I started collecting books and academic papers on stoneware, pottery and everything that looked remotely connected.
For that I had to reactivate Obsidian, which I had used professionally before, to keep the stuff /semy/ organized.
Sidequests:
- Obsidian
- The Black Death and population expansion
- Increasing affluence and more discerning buyers
- Printing, woodcuts and the commodisation of art
- Continuity between the Rhineland and the Maasgouw
- Germania Inferior
- Germania Secunda
- Frankish Settlement (Salian and Ripurarian Franks)
- Regnum Lotharii (or Lotharingia)
- Eclesiastical province Cologne
- Cologne
- Cambrai
- Lüttich (Maastricht, Tongeren)
- Utrecht
- and bits on the right side of the Rhine
- HRM
- Kiln types and construction
- …
As I had somehow managed to miss the site, I went back to Frechen and looked at some kilns.
This brought me to a visit to Raeren (spring of 2026). With the car, because that exceeds my abilities (80 km one way). And because I passed it, I also visited Langerwehe.
First Raeren is pronounced with a long a (Raaren). Second, it is a German speaking bit of Belgium. Nothing to do with world wars though, it was part of the Spanish Netherlands.
Anyway, Raeren. There is a very good museum with an also very good website.
The museum is in the castle.
And here we find also some of the tools of the stoneware trade, namely molds
And the stoneware that could be made with molds.
My subsequent visit to Langerwehe was a bust. The Töpfereimuseum is closed for renovation (rebuilding?) and the interim exhibition was not yet ready.
I did have a brief talk with the resident potter (quite a nice shop actually). And he told me that while Raeren made stoneware for export, Langerwehe served local markets mainly.
So back on the list it goes
At the end of the Gothic period and the beginning of the Renaissance the cities on the Rhine and the Meuse held an ever larger group of people with a bit of money and a need to represent. A similar need was had by the lower nobility.
They wanted better tableware than their poor “cousins”, but pewter was out of the question. In parallel, more sophisticated (and longer lasting) stoneware drinking vessels could be seen in the taverns.
The stoneware followed the wine trade and the beer trade of the Hanse all the way to Scandinavia, Iceland, the Baltics, Russia, England, and of course what are today the Netherlands and Belgium.
From the Netherlands and England stoneware than crossed oceans.
There is a really fascinating project, Bartmann goes global that follows the stoneware to the Americas, Africa, Asia, South East Asia, even New Zealand and Australia.
More possible side quests:
These two styles influenced each other and Cologne painters worked in Flanders and Flemish painters in Cologne.
This could be linked to the printing trade including woodcuts, see also the Global spread of the printing press
I now reigning myself in. I don’t want to become an expert. I’m more of a dilettante in the 18th century meaning, ideally a broadband dilettante
What next:
- Revisit Langerwehe
- Museum Hetjens in Düsseldorf
- Visit the Westerwald
- Explore a bit (but only a bit) how masters and journeymen moved between potteries at different locations and how the craft spread
- Have a quick peek at demographics and affluence, what were the typical buyers of stoneware
- Glance at the numbers, apparently there were millions of stoneware jugs made
