Beer Steins at Cascarelli’s over the front door.  You’ll see lots of antiques at Cascarelli’s but you will need to look up high.  Throughout the 1900s, collecting antique and replicated beer steins became very popular hobby not only among individual people, but in museums as well. In the latter half of the 19th century, stein makers found different advantages within the different materials. The advantage in using stoneware to make steins was that molds could be used to mass produce elaborately carved steins.

In using glass, not only could one produce multiple glass mugs, but an artistic touch could add to the glass by including acid etchings, glass staining, or even multicolored overlays. Porcelain’s advantage was that a stein fabricator could use molds to make “character steins”, steins that had a particular shape modeled after an item or a person.

It is believed by some that the lid was implemented during the age of the Black Plague, to prevent diseased fleas from getting into the beer.

The collection was originally purchased by the founder of Cascarelli’s, Robert Cascarelli, in the early 1900’s.

See this valuable collection of beer steins featured on Wikipedia at the link below.

Source: wikipedia “beer stein” : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_stein
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