With horse and cart

Carters exported the Raeren ceramics with cart and horses into the whole world. They often travelled on unmade-up roads for months. On their way back they brought salt from North Germany and Westfalia as well as the latest news from the world. The ceramics were packed into straw. In the surrounding area, jugs were sold by hawkers with their rucksacks. This was mostly second choice ware sold to reduced prices.

Rhenish ceramic cart, copper engraving by Ferdinand Lindner, about 1870

Cart with inscriptions in Raeren dialect, drawing by Peter Emontspohl, 1978

Ceramic hawker by Frans Hogenberg in: Händlerrufe aus Köln, 1589

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Raeren, Cologne and the Hanseatic League

From the Middle Ages on, the Hanseatic city of Cologne was the most important transshipment centre for Rhenish ceramics. On the market of Cologne the Raeren potters also sold their stoneware. From Cologne it was exported via the Rhine and the commercial arteries of the Hanseatic League to Northern and Eastern Europe. Exports to the South were rare because of an own extensive ceramic production existing there. This mural by the well-known Raeren artist André Blank (1914-1987) was drawn in this room for the opening of the pottery museum in 1960 and shows the most important export routes for Raeren stoneware.

“Alter Markt” in Cologne, copper engraving by Johann Toussyn, 1660

Detail (19th century) from the copper engraving by Johann Toussyn

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From Raeren into the whole world

From the end of the 16th century on, Rhenish stoneware was exported into the whole then known world. The English, Dutch and Spanish used the ceramics as storing devices on their ships. They also sold the stoneware in the colonies of the new world. That way the Raeren jugs came to North and Central America, to Australia and to South-East Asia. Archaeologists keep finding Raeren stoneware during their excavations or on ship wrecks.


Australian stamp with a Frechen bearded-man jug

Raeren jug from the wreck of the "Batavia" sunk at the Australian West coast

Australian deep-sea archaeologists salvage a stoneware vessel