Through the Years with Fred Sehring Beer Ceramics

Never before or since, to my knowledge, has a brewery over a span approaching a decade issued a series of dated steins and mugs.  The Fred Sehring Brewery of Joliet, Illinois, from 1900 through 1908 annually commissioned Hugo Theumler of Pittsburgh to provide it with a new items for gifting to favored customers.    By that time, brewery founder Frederick Sehring, an immigrant from Germany, shown here, had died.  His son, Louis, took the reins of management and may be assumed to have given the orders for the ceramics, and likely approved the designs. 

The first in the series, a stein, celebrated the Turn of the Century.  Nationally the 20th Century had been ushered in with great fanfare and Louis had caught the spirit. “Prosit! - 1900,” it reads.  This was a traditional German toast, indicating “to your good health” with a tankard raised high.  The decor also has the trademark of the Sehring Brewery, a shield with a foaming stein marked with an “S” rampant.  Stalks of wheat and sprigs of hops surround the shield.

The following year Sehring adopted a calendar motif.  The elaborate label includes, as shown here, a woman whose twisted body indicates a flamboyant mood as she lifts high a foaming goblet while straddling a wooden keg.   A monkish figure graced the other side of the 1901 calendar.  He has his arm around a beer keg.  The elaborate transfer-printed design is typical of the artistic and technical capacity of the Theumler factory.

For some reason for years I was unable to locate a 1902 Sehring issue.  Then in 2020 three were sold at auction, each has a picture of a woman seemingly bursting through the ceramic, an image that Theumler also used on a whiskey flask. 

In 1903 the company replaced the stein format with a beer mug.  This one bears an illustration of the Joliet brewery, replete with dark smoke coming from a stack.  While such a picture today might indicate air pollution, at that time such plumes indicated that the brewery was operating full out.

For the 1904 version, Sehring decided on a dark brown glaze surrounding the same brewery logo seen on the 1900 version.  Although Theumler provided the design of the transfers on his ceramics, he did not make the actual vessels.  Those were purchased as “blank” ceramics from a variety of potteries in and around Pittsburg, decorated and often stamped with his own mark.  In 1904 Sehring also issued a mini-mug cum match striker, shown below  It carried a design similar to the 1903 mug.

In 1905, the front of the stein was a repeat of the 1904 stein.  The obverse, however, held portraits of lovely young women displaying considerable cleavage and a saucy manner.  In a departure from the past these Sehring steins were trimmed in gold with gold handles.  I am particularly fond of the woman at right who seems to have “bee-sting lips” and  two purple camellias in her hair.  Very fetching, indeed. 

The 1906 mug had an unusual label.  The lead word is “Gezundheit,”  literally meaning “God bless you,”  usually said when someone has sneezed.  This raises the issue of whether Fred Sehring Brewing Co. thought their beer would make people sneeze.  This mug carries the same glaze and logo that bedecks the offerings for 1904 and 1905.

My personal favorite among the Sehring offerings is the 1907 stein.  It is decorated in a Chinese blue and white motif that features a number of idealized flowers of varying sizes. If it were not for the Fred Sehring logo and “Joliet” to guide us, we might thing ourselves back in the late Ming Dynasty.   It is a truly elegant cup from which to drink beer. 

The last stein in the series is celebrates the anniversary of the firm, founded by Frederick Sehring in 1868.  It was issued by the brewery in two styles, one with the letters spelling “Sehring” in deep red, matching the familiar logo and a second   in which the letters are hollow.  Both stein wish “greetings” to the drinker, perhaps not as compelling as “prosit,” but better than “gezundheit.”

In contemplating this array of steins and jugs I am curious about the decisions that went into approving the designs for each, year by year.  As to why the series stopped in 1908, we might look to the death of Hugo Theumler in September 1908 apparently of “acute indigestion.”  With his passing production in Pittsburgh ceased and and all references to the firm disappeared.  Nonetheless, the Sehring brewery has given us a unique series of stein and mugs.  Happy the collector who can line them up, year by year, on a display shelf.

Mini-Mug Match Strikers

Some of the more unusual advertising giveaways of the late 19th and early 20th Century were small ceramic items shaped like beer mugs with handles and circular serrated bases. They could be used to store and then strike safety tipped matches. Approximately 2 and 1/8th inches high and 1 and 3/4 inches at the base, today they are avidly sought by collectors. A Scottdale, Arizona, man, for example, has accumulated more than 60.

Although a wide range of businesses issued mini-mugs, including pottery and glass companies, they were a natural for breweries. The tiny cup advertising beer presumably could trigger a thirst for the same brew in a larger drinking vessel. The first example shown here is of a monk ready to quaff a glass of beer. It replicates the pictures that triggered the first post of this blog (April 29, 2009) under the title “New Finds.”

This mini-mug confirms the thesis that items with this transfer originated with the Theumler Manufacturing Co. of Pittsburgh and Rochester, Pennsylvania. Theumler appears to have been a major creator of mini-mugs. It also made the Pabst Beer mini-mug showing Old World gnomes drinking beer around a barrel of the brew that “Made Milwaukee Famous,” and the 1904 example from the Sehring Brewing organization of Joliet, Illinois, a family-owned business that survived from 1868 until Prohibition. The picture of the Sehring mug shows the ribbed base that allowed matches to be struck.

Theumler almost certainly made the Iroquois Brewing mini shown here. The company’s characteristic mark appears on the Buffalo brewery’s larger beer mugs of the time. As noted before, Theumler was not a ceramics manufacturer. It bought base stock from regional potters and then its decorators went to work supplying the designs requested by its customers. Iroquois Brewery existed in Western New York State from 1892 to 1971.

The final example, for the Bartholomay Brewing Co. of Rochester, New York, is from Germany and dated 1911. Although the Theumler firm decorated Bartholomay’s normal sized mugs during the early part of the 1900s, after owner Hugo Theumler died in 1909, his company ceased operation almost immediately. As a result, in 1911 Bartholomay was forced to import this mini-mug from Germany where Hugo originally had learned the trade. The item was issued for a Shriner’s Convention in Rochester, known as “Feel-Ter-Hum.” The brewery itself closed in 1934 after 82 years in operation.


Key words: Mini-mug match strikers, Theumler Manufacturing Co.