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House of Steins 1

The development of the collection

From the first piece till now House of Steins

As you read in „the History of my first stein”, I started collecting steins in 1972.
As the years passed, my collection kept growing and the philosophy of “I collected everything” changed. I started the so called thematic collecting.
In 2011 my wife and I wrote our first book „Beersteins Book” about my collection. In 2018 we decided we would place the collection in a new building, we established on our property. We gave it the name „House of Steins” after my favorite song „House of the Rising Sun”.
We determined how to place the steins – approximately 1000 pcs – onto the shelves. We created groups: according to the factories,, the raw materials and the motifs. One of the most important task was to write detailed descriptions for every item which includes the item’s description, production year, factory of manufacture and if there is text on the stein, its translation, from German to Hungarian.
My favorite factory is Simon Peter Gerz, my favorite motif is in paragraph 11 and my favorite artist is Heinrich Schlitt.
House of Steins can be visited free of charge, by appointment only. We can be contacted either by phone +36-30-9329827 or by email korsokhaza(at)gmail.com.
Some reports were made about House of Steins which are available on our Youtube chanel. The first one is a very detailed, 30 minutes long. If you only want to glance into our collection watch the the reports "Izőrzők" 2,5 minutes and "Almárium" 4 minutes. These reports were made by the Channel of Duna Television.

Photo album

Some interesting pictures from Houe of the Steins

My first stein

My first stein

I have been collecting steins since 1972. There are two versions of my first stein. A fiction, and a non-fiction version. At that time, I was working at the Gas-Company as the secretary of the finance director. He was responsible for Christmas gifts. It was THIS stein. The fictional version is: I asked him to give me one and he gave one to me. The non-fictional version is: I asked him to give me one but he refused my wish, saying every piece was needed for his partners. When he left the office I opened his cabinet and took one piece. He never realized that one stein was missing.

The oldest factory

The oldest factory

The factory was established by Simon Peter Gerz in a small town (Höhr) near the river Rhine. Only two years later The factory won several gold medals at the Wiesbaden fair and won the title of „HOFLIERFERANT” which meant, they became the official supplier to the Duke of Nassau. They were the market leaders in stein production till the end of 1980. They produced the steins with a very high level technical knowledge and accuracy. Unfortunately this factory went into bankruptcy and closed in 2000.

Paragraph 11 steins

Paragraph 11 steins

The history of Paragraph 11 derived from the students who had studied at the Heidelberg University between 1810 and 1820. They decided to create their Beer Codex which included the rules regarding their beer-drinking activity and their beer-drinker’s society. In this Codex all the rights, obligations, punishments were settled. The first paragraph started with 11st saying Moses had already used the first ten in the Ten Commandments. The paragraph is “Keep on drinking”.

The litophane steins

The litophane steins

“Lithophanes are found exclusively in porcelain steins. They are describes as "basically a porcelain transparency which, when held before a light, creates a three-dimensional image. The image is obtained from the relative thickness of the porcelain. The tones of the thinner area are lighter, while the thicker the porcelain, the darker the image.. The lighting brings out the soft variations of shadings and coloring of the clay." (Walt Vodges) This technique was already known in China during the Tang Dynasty (BC 618-970).

Character steins

Character steins

The character stein didn’t really come into it’s own until the 1850s. Figural steins were shaped like animal or human heads, figurines, famous buildings, famous people, well known buildings, churches, or other things (barrel, pin). There are probably no better-known character steins than the Munich Child steins! The Münchner Kindl, as it is known in its home town of Munich, is the beloved symbol of the fair city of Bavaria. Some really nice and interesting character steins are produced in England by Royal Doulton.