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Treasures in your attic: Hard to tell from photo, but tankard could be quite valuable

Q. This tankard or stein has been in the family for more than 60 years. The tankard is in mint condition and is about 15 inches tall. On the body there are the initials “AD” and the number 1514. The monogram looks like that of Albrecht Durer. Please let us know what you can about this piece and how much it is worth.

A. What we have to say about this piece is strictly conjecture.

The quality of the pictures does not allow us to give any sort of concrete opinion or dollar value, but this piece is potentially rather valuable, so we thought we would discuss some of the possibilities.

First of all, the hand of German artist Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) never touched this tankard. At best, Durer had been dead almost 200 years before this piece was crafted — and in the worst case, dead 300 years or more.

We feel the Durer monogram and date are there because the image on this tankard was derived from his work — possibly done sometime in the year 1514. At that time, Durer was in his hometown of Nuremburg (in residence there from mid-1507 to 1520), and in 1513 and 1514 he executed five great etchings — “The Knight,” “Death,” “The devil,” “St. Jerome in His Study” and “Melancholia.”

We cannot see the image on the tankard well enough to identify it, but it may be from one of these etchings or it might be a self-portrait. In any event, the work on this piece is superb, and all the decoration appears in the photographs to be exquisitely hand-done — but photographs can be misleading.

The reddish-brown color of this tankard suggests to us that it may be a relatively rare type of ware called “Böttger Steinzeug.”

Johann Friedrich Böttger was an alchemist who bragged to the Prussian king that he could make gold out of base metal. When the king pressed for concrete results, Böttger fled but was captured by agents of August the Strong, elector of Saxony and king of Poland. August needed gold desperately and he imprisoned Böttger at his castle in Meissen with orders to make the precious metal. No surprise that Böttger failed; but the king was also an avid collector of Chinese-style hard-paste porcelain, which no one in Europe knew how to make at the time.

Böttger said that with a little time and luck he could discover the secret, and August the Strong let him try. He succeeded in making hard-paste porcelain with a glaze in 1709, but the year before he had discovered the hardest stoneware known at the time — a reddish-brown ware he called “Steinzeug.”

Böttger thought Steinzeug was his crowning achievement, and the ware looks a lot like the tankard in today’s question. Most Böttger Steinzeug items found on today’s market were made at Meissen in the early to mid-20th century. Some of these can be very expensive, but some are not (more expensive pieces tend to be figures such as elephants, certain rare portrait busts and the image of “God the Father”).

We feel that this tankard might be an old piece of Böttger Steinzeug, possibly even 18th-century, and may have a significant value. You need to show your piece to an expert for an authoritative, in-person evaluation. However, don’t get your hopes up too high because this is a long shot at best.

Ÿ Contact Helaine Fendelman and Joe Rosson at Treasures in Your Attic, P.O. Box 18350, Knoxville, TN 37928.