The original idea, and why I thought it was a good one

About a year ago I stopped working and am now a pensioner. I looked for something to do that would, ideally, combine sport, photography and my interest for history.

Living, as I do, 45 minutes per bicycle from Cologne, I thought that medieval trading goods traded through Cologne might be a good topic. Their sources and markets could be visited by bicycle if close enough and by Deutschlandticket if not. Once there, I could take photographs to my hearts content. And as there are literally hundreds of possible goods, if we go from the 4th century AD Franks up to Napoleon in the 18th.

Also, I could just start. I have a computer, a camera and an ebike. Perfect.

Also, as a project it is somewhat sustainable for a pensioner. I can replace the ebike with public transport or car if cycling gets to difficult, I can keep researching and (at least) looking at pictures as long as the eyes will work.

Early success with Stoneware

I first looked at Rheinisches Steinzeug (Rhenian Stoneware) because I was familiar with the potteries of Frechen, an easy cycle trip away. Even though the potteries in Frechen moved to industrial wares (vitrified clay pipes for waste water, tiles and large scale wall cladding, …) the heritage got preserved because one of the industrialists gave himself a museum for his birthday, the Keramion.

Further research led to Siegburg, Raeren, Langerwehe and the Westerwald and …

And apart from some museums being closed for renovation:

• Langerwehe
• Hetjens, Düsseldorf (reopened in the meantime)

some other museums had much less on show then I thought, or had been led to believe by (admittedly late 19th century) sources.

I traveled, I took pictures, this looked easy, or at the very least doable.

There is even an international research project going on: Bartmann goes global

Hitting the wall

Sarwörter

Coming off that “high” I selected the Sarwörter as the next topic.

Sarwörter were armor (Harnisch) makers (originally chain mail makers) and they gave that name to their guild as well as a Gaffel ¹.

See also: The trade and history of the Sarwoerter in medieval Cologne

Where is the armor (Harnisch)

While the literature (see below) asserted quite confidently:

• armor (Harnisch) (and other weapons) were made in great number in Cologne
• armor (Harnisch) (and other weapons) were exported to hanseatic cities, to the Low Countries, to England, to Scandinavia …
• armor (Harnisch) were needed in large numbers in Cologne (and other European cities) where all male citizens were required to own armor (Harnisch) (and other weapons) to defend the city, if and when necessary
• the Sarwörter were an important part of Cologne politics for quite a few centuries

So far I have not been able to find a museum that exhibits Cologne armor (Harnisch) or chain mail.

Colognes production is overshadowed in the more popular literature by the production of the southern German cities of Augsburg and Nürnberg, who produced (also) high class pieces for nobles and royalty and are as such better represented in museums and collections. Much nicer to look at, then the workmanlike quality meant for the troops.

Where are the workshops

There are two challenges.

a) find the sources to pinpoint a workshop (let alone a particular source of iron). After all we are talking about broadly the time between 1100 and 1700. So quite a bit, and the references are sprinkled over many different sources.

b) Cologne has changed quite a bit since then and the city scape looks quite different - Secularisation and destruction of church property - Modernisation and the car centric city - The destruction during the Second World War

In Where are the pictures of the SARWOERTER you promised I traced the location of the Gaffel Hall of the Sarwörter Gaffel to his street junction.

Where did the raw materials come from

The obvious answer, for both is probably the Bergische Land which is a bit too large to photograph easily. There are also too many known mines for a quick trip. Further research is necessary. ²

That escalated quickly

Find some (more) sources

A trawl through Cologne City Libraries especially the section about Cologne found some good overviews, but nothing that would have been helpful to plan a cycling tour.

Online was much better, as a lot of literature up to the early 20th century has been digitized, getting the University library card opened up more, and now, being a “Gasthörer” access is very good.

The challenge is no longer finding stuff, but reading it all.

Oh sh’t

At the moment I have 703 source markdown files relevant to my “research”, ca 414 MB.

In hunting down relevant source material I early on stumbled on the Hansische Geschichtsverein. On their site they have almost everything they ever published since 1870 in digital form, or as links. This seemed really promising, since Cologne of course was a city of the Hanse.

But this also yielded almost two hundred books of several hundred pages, assorted (hundreds of) footnotes and so on.

If I wanted to do any cycling tours before my 100th birthday, reading each of the books in detail, making notes as I go, was not feasible, especially as most finds led to more books.

OBSIDIAN to the rescue

When I was still working, I used OBSIDIAN to keep track of my projects (I used to be a professional project wrangler for mumble mumble years), their deliverables, their actions, their minutes and my notes. All linked by simple tagging and made practical with Dataview (if you know, you approve).

So, I went back to OBSIDIAN and dropped in everything I could find. Which meant:

• Find a digital copy of a book (easy with the Hansische Geschichtsverein), translate into a markdown file and …
• Finding the digital copies got easier by getting a library card of Cologne University and then as of now, being a “Gasthörer”, which gives me full privileges in the library
• But then, > 700 source files with together 424 MB of text, phew

I tried various systems to make sense of it all, but it was extremely slow going.

What does done look like?

This is the most important question a project wrangler (or anyone, really) can ask of a task or project, and I had to remind myself that collecting and hoarding (all mine, mine) files was not the goal.

In this case the goal is:

• I have fun
• I learn something
• I ride my bicycle
• I take photos

The goal is not:

• becoming a specialist in Rhenish Stonewear, or Cologne weaponry, or …
• publishing academically original monographs
• turning into a caricature of a 19th century private scholar
• becoming a programmer

So some automation was required

An article about the “Karpathy LLM Wiki” caught my eye because the approach, if not necessarily the method, promised to bring some structure to my sources.

There even is an OBSIDIAN plug in that promises to turn your notes into a wiki.

In that wiki there would be two classes of notes, linked to each other, entities and concepts, which seemed ideal.

All my sources were either long out of copyright or open access, so I assume already in most KI models training materials.

Of course, turning ca 700 books into 3 to 5 (or more) entities and concepts first did nothing for my basic problem, I was just exchanging one collection of trees stopping me from seeing the forest with another, even larger, collection of trees.

I had to change the wiki structure to include a category person to be able to track professions or roles (eg being a Sarwörter or wine trader or …) and locations. At the moment the wiki has almost 950 persons, which are being enriched with their address, if any are documented. For this publications citing Schreinsbücher (medieval Cologne property registers) and guild documents are key. Also there are publications that cite “customs” (Akzise) records for cologne and list who was bringing what good into the city.

Also trade routes are now documented, there are some historical books on trade routes and a complete atlas of Hanseatic trade routes.

So the structure is, slowly, beginning to yield some results

Topic (eg Sarwörter)
- Person
	- Profession
		- Raw material (eg iron wire)
		- Product (eg chain mail)
		- Market in Cologne (if applicable, eg. Alter Markt)
		- Export market (eg. Groningen)
	- Adress
	- Time active (eg 1470)

³

Expect some pictures of modern houses. where medievall houses and workshops once stood. And pictures of maps, so many maps.

Next steps:

Product (eg chain mail)
- Raw material (eg. iron wire)
	- Sources
		- market (eg Frankfurt fair)
		- producer (eg a named mine)
	- Route to Cologne

Product (eg chain mail)
- Route to export market (eg Ochsenstraße (Groningen-Cologne))
- Export market (eg Groningen)

Then, because of LLM, each one has to be checked against sources while a (cycling) trip is planned. This is quite comfortable done with OBSIDIANs search function. ⁴

What next

1. Finalise finding the address of and scheduling tours to Sarwörter locations
2. Finding, confirming and mapping source locations for Sarwörter raw materials like iron, steel and iron wire, and eventually turn those into trips
3. Finding, confirming and mapping the end destinations of the armor (Harnisch) …
4. Repeat for
   • Swords
   • Lances
   • (Cross-)Bows
   • Gloves
   • Helmets
   • Wine
   • Cloth
   • Yarn
   • Silk
   • Leather(goods)
   • … this could take a while

Well, not so simple, unfortunately. As I mentioned before, the whole harnish making business is frightfully underrepresented. There are no easily accessible chunks. But. I had some, little, success.

The Gaffel of the Sarwörter etc. had their Gaffelhouse (meeting and admin) in the House “Zum großen Leopard” opposite the Minderbrüder monastery. A Gaffel in medieval Cologne was a group of guilds in one society that had a) representation on the city council, b) in case of war were going to defend a part of the city walls c) represented the guilds to traders, other guilds and the city d) enforced the rules of its guilds on applicable products and, finally, e) together with the guilds of the Gaffel provided basic social security.

Cologne Cathedral in the top right corner, Map Rheinhardt 1752

As we can see, the Minderbrüder (Minoriten) had quite some extensive holdings, founded on the area of the palace of the bishop of Liege (part of Church Provice of Cologne). In the east it is bounded by the Hohe Straße (the roman cardo maximus).

The House “Zum großen Leopard” was right opposite the southside of the church. And here is the photograph of the Gaffelhaus today.

The house was torn down in the 19th century to make room for the Ludwigstraße, today the MaxiMara shop is on the site, which reached into the road. Here is the only picture of the Gaffelhaus.

Enlarged out of this “Kreuter’sche Karte”, namely No 62

Some more about Franz Kreuter and his maps.

So, a start.

#historycycle #history #cologne #koeln

Why Cologne

As I’m living here, and as Cologne provides 2000 years of history, this is as good a place as any to look at as an extended retirement project.

Cologne is situated directly on the Rhine and has had harbour infrastructure since Roman times. Also Cologne lies at the point where the Lower Rhine transitions into the Middle Rhine which need quite different vessels to use.

Below Cologne the Aak(e) was the freight ship adapted to the Lower Rhine and for coastal shipping.

The Oberländer (Mainzer Lade) was a flat bottomed ship that could also drive up the shore. These ships traded up the Rhine to Mainz and beyond.

But the city also was at the crossing of various land based trade routes, for example the Via Regia connecting the Atlantic and the Cracow.

What trade

In any village, town or city trading will occur. If the city lies on a trading route, traders will pass. If it lays at a cross road, many traders will pass. If, like Cologne, it lies at the heart of many roads and a major river, where also for navigational reasons two different ship types are used for travel up stream versus down stream, you have opportunities

Also Cologne was an important administrative center. First as the capital of the Roman province of Lower Germany, as a bishops, later archbishops seat and the Center of a church province that included the sees of Cambrai, Lüttich, Minden, Münster, Osnabrück and Utrecht.

The Archbishop of Cologne also, at one time or another, as the Duke of Lothringen, the Chancellor of the HRE for Italy, an Elector of the HRE, the so called Erzstift which included large landholdings including much of Westphalia.

For a long time they were also the undisputed, later disputed, later titular, head of the city itself (again a slight simplification of several hundred years of development.

In any case these factors led to Cologne being one of the largest trading cities north of the Alps.

What is a Sarwoerter

Sar(w) is an old German word relating to or meaning armour. A Woerter, Worter or Woerter is someone who makes, in this case armour.

Specifically the Sarwoerters started out making mail and then, later, also plate armour.

The trade is documented in Cologne from 1396 onwards. In that year various guilds but also brotherhoods of merchants and similar were grouped into 24 Gaffeln, who (1) were who elected the city councillors (much simplification here) and (2) were responsible for the defence of a section of the city walls and (3) were part feasting and part mutual aid societies (much simplification here).

What this tells us, the trade needs to be (much) older, because in a “revolutionary” setting you don’t become the eponym of one of the new Gaffeln who will share power in the city, if you are small and new.

How long do they go back?

Who knows?

The oldest known Schreinsbuch entry (medieval land registry) has an Ezelin Loricator as a witness in 1150. His “colleague” Arnoldus receives half a house as dowry when he marries Agnes, the daughter of Gerardus some time before 1200.

In the late 13th century we find Adam, and (another?) Adam plus wives Gertrude and Reynerus with wives Elisabeth.

This shows at least 2 centuries before the Gaffel formation.

Known Sarwoerter

• Ezelin loricator (n. 1150)
• Arnoldus loricator (12. Jh.)
• Heinrich Gladiator (1200/1239)
• Adam loricator (1273–1283)
• mag. Reynerus (Reynardus) loricator (1291–1311)
• Gerardus Helmslegere (1298)
• Ec(k)bert Armificus (1334)
• Rutg. Sarwortere (1305)
• Reynorus Sarwortere (1311)
• Conr. Sarwortere (1335)
• Bertram Armificus (1343)
• Bertrami sarworter (magister, † v. 1358)
• Thilmannus sarworter (1358, Sohn des Bertrami)
• Heinrich von Aulstorp (1428, Harnischmacher)
• Heinrich van Ailstorp (Harnischmacher)
• Heinrich van Alfter, gen. Kruch (Harnischmacher, 1466)
• Johann van Droilshagen (Lehrling bei Harnischmacher Heinrich van Alfter, 1466)
• Simon van Wipperfürde (Harnischmacher, Kölner Bürger; seine Tochter Giertgin (*ca. 1385))
• Toenis van Mölheim (Harnischmacher, 1489, 1494)
• Der alde Neve (Sarwörter, 1473)
• Yelle (Sarwörter, 1473)
• Meister Mais (deutscher Harnischmacher, aufgenommen 1473)
• Peter van Alfter (Harnischmacher, 1473)
• Clais v. Ense
• Jan Kemper
• Jacob v. Wedich
• Evert v. Wedich
• Goedert Gryn der junge
• Heinrich v. Bercheym
• Johan Koelgijn
• Hans v. Berckervelde (Schwager eines Sarwörters)
• Joh. Wilh. Lohkamp (letzter Bannerherr)
• Thijs / Matthias Sarwoerter (Aachen)
• Johan Zylman (1397)
• Herman aen deym Maltzbuchil (1397)
• Joris Paffehase (1397)
• Henkyn swertveyger (1397)
• Heinrich Swertveger (1397)
• Konrad Swertveger (1397)
• Gierhart Franck (Schwertfeger, 1483)
• Berthold Harnischmacher (16. Jh., Tumultführer)
• Caspar Harnischmacher (16. Jh.)
• Damian der Harnischmacher (16. Jh.)
• Johann von Attendorn (Harnischmacher, Gaffelbote, 16. Jh.)
• Johann von Wermerskirchen (Harnischmacher, 16. Jh.)
• Christ. von Holte (Sarwörter-Amt, 15. Jh.)
• Heinr. von Rollenberg (Sarwörter-Amt, 15. Jh.)
• Glas Reyderade (Sarwörter-Amt)
• Mart. Reve (Sarwörter-Amt, 15. Jh.)
• Walter de Beche / de Besche (1665–1716): Hauptmann der Harnischmacher-Zunft, Ratsherr 1709–1715 für das Sarwörteramt
• Sebastian Honvalle (* 1675): Barbierer bei der Harnischmacher-Zunft
• Johann Josef Eichen (1748–1809): Bannerherr der Sarwörter, Kaufmann, Ratszugehörigkeit 1786–1797
• Benedikt Josef Wolter de Beche (1751–1831): Bannerherr der Sarwörter, Schreinsherr bei St. Columba, Laurenz und Martin, Ratszugehörigkeit 1786–1796

But what about the quest?

The quest was to identify places in or around Cologne, having to do with a traiding good, go there by cycle and take photos.

Places got identified, but, due to progress and of course the second world war, there are no historic buildings left to photograph. Even the part of the city walls that the Sarwoerter were responsible for, no longer stands.

I’ll do the trips anyway while I ponder a new research topic and collect armour collection museums to visit.

The start

www.zahr.koeln/2025/11/0…

So, how is my “research” going?

The answer is “perhaps” - new sources are going into my stash (Obsidian), information piles on, BUT, the goal remains elusive.

The goal remains, spent my retirement time cycling with my camera to places where trading goods of medieval Cologne had been produced, traded or used.

After the “success” of looking at Rhenish Stoneware I thought that medieaval harnesses might be a good next topic.

Oh my.

Getting the internet to even acknowledge an armour making industry in medieval Cologne was tricky. Mainly because the internet focuses on the flashy princely armour made in places like Augsburg and Nürnberg and ignores the workman like stuff, provided to troops in the 30 and 80 year wars.

Also the scholarly reception of armour and of specific guilds and trades seems to be sketchy. Here I’m open (desperate) for correction.

What we know:

• There is a guild of armour makers (Sarwörter)
• They are the naming guild of the Sarwörter Gaffel, one of 22, which are important parts of the constitutional reforms of 1396 in Cologne. A Gaffel sent elected representatives to the City Council, was responsible for the defence of a section of the city wall, …
• Cologne traded armour
  • in the City
  • in the Rhine and Maas Region
  • south, down the Rhine into France, Switzerland, …
  • north, up the Rhine into France, Netherlands, England, Skaninavia and the Baltics
  • etc.

But all that is not really cyclable or photographable

Thankfully @bookandswordblog@scholar.social helped with some sources, of which

• Pierre Terjanian, “The Armourers of Cologne: Organization and Export Markets of a Foremost European Armour-making Center (1391-1660),”
• Hermann Kellenbenz und Klara von Eyll eds., Zwei Jahrtausende Kölner Wirtschaft, Band I (Greven Verlag: Köln, 1975)

proved especially helpful.

The “Zwei Jahrtausende …” confirmed what I already knew, but also provided a few hundred suources for my overall “trading goods” search, but also for the harnesses. In the meantime I found a physical copy online for 7 € including shipping, so I’ll never be without it again, even when I get my loaner back to the library.

“The armourers …” went into details and also provided more sources, many of which were downloadable which is kind of ideal for Obsidian ;-)

I’m now more confident, that I can find places to cycle to and photograph.

So, thanks to @bookandswordblog@scholar.social and @mrundkvist@archaeo.social who made the connection

Well, my research is going poorly. What research I hear you ask? Well, short version I want to cycle to the production sites of medieval Colognes trade goods…

www.zahr.koeln/2025/11/0…

The first trade goods were Rhenish Stoneware goods. And it went quite well, apart from a few museums being closed for renovations.

Cool, I put the missing museums on a list and contemplated my next coup.

I chose harnesses. Why, I hear you ask!

Easy, in my collection of digitised books, and there’ll be a post about that later, the making and the makers of harnesses are well attested.

Turning this into actually visitabel locations remains elusive.

It turns out, I was lucky with stoneware. In the mid 19th century stoneware was first discovered by collectors and the systematised by scholars. And the books have been digitised and are easily accessible.

#history #geschichte #historycycle

Today visit was a little frustrating.

Nice exhibits, appropriately labelled, starting with Roman period earthenware and continuing to contemporary and technical ceramics.

How clay is dug, how a potters wheel is used, how stoneware is burnt, including a very nice replica Kannenofen.

Of course Bartmänner are also on display.

Some of the connections to Siegburg, Raeren, Frechen, Cologne are mentioned, but, of the complex trade that carried the finished wares all over the world, no mention.

Of how the decorations on the stoneware aimed at a growing affluent group of lesser nobility, clergy and trades and let the potters compete with cheaper earthenware and more expensive pewter, no word.

There is a whole wall of stoneware bottles. There is a mention, that they were produced to order for Portuguese wine, English gin, sparkling water… But again, no mention of the trade routes.

The website is better, but has no links to sources. Still, if you are close, a fun morning or afternoon.

#historycycle #RhenishStoneware #photography #fotografie @photography@fedigroups.social

www.keramikmuseum.de/home-engl…

Rhenish Stoneware

You thought I was done, but you’d be wrong. I ended the “research” but there’s still, well, stuff to do.

For one, I did not yet go to the Westerwald. This is the “other” continuing stoneware pottery centre.

The Westerwald is where potters from Siegburg and Raeren went at the end of the 16th century. Siegburg was running out of wood and losing customers to the newer Rennaisance designs of Frechen stoneware.

Raeren ended up in the Spanish Netherlands which drove some of the protestant potters to the Westerwald.

Both Raeren and Siegburg were heavily impacted by the 30year war.

So we ended up with 2 surviving centres.

Frechen, which converted over time to the production of stoneware tiles and water/refuse pipes (until the early 2000).

The Westerwald (Höhr-Grenzhausen) which took up mass production and kept it up also until the early 2000).

The trip to the Westerwald is planned for May, including the Keramikmuseum.

I’ve also compiled a list of photographs I want to take in Cologne and Siegburg. There’s also another three museums I haven’t seen yet (two are closed for renovations atm)

#history #archaeology #rhineland #stoneware #steinzeug #retirement

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:

• Kölner Malerschule
• Flemish Painting

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

It’s going to be historical, archaeological, (mostly) cyclable und fun

We are going on a weeks vacation on the other side of the Rhine, which always entails a short moment of hesitation, inhibition, but also a sense of adventure.

The centre of our exploration is going to be Merseburg. While the city itself is an ottonian foundation with some medieval bits left over, we are after older, much older, remains. And Merseburg is smack in the middle of it.

• Firstly the Nebra Sky Disk (Himmelsscheibe)
• The Kreisgrabenanlage von Pömmelte, which strangely enough has no English wikipedia page, anyway, think Stonehenge, but made from wood
• Goseck Circle, again, think wooden Stonehenge
• A couple of dolmen burials, most specifically DOLMENGÖTTIN LANGENEICHSTÄDT, again, German only
• And there is a gaggle of interesting museums (closed on Mondays) in the area also.

Many of these attractions are within cycling (ebike) distance of our hotel, and if I squint at the weather forecast, the weather might be holding up.

There is also a website for the whole region called Sky Paths which gives an overview of the attractions.

#history #archaeology #vacation #cycling

On the way back from Raeren I stopped at Töpfereimuseum Langerwehe which is closed for renovations. Have to come back in a year or three.

#HistoryCycle #history #photography #fotografie #steingut #steinzeugkeramik #stoneware #steengoed