very large, very green stein!

I've got a stein with a pewter top engraved with flowers; four panels, three depicting gentlemen of substance (one has a crown or circlet on his head, another a plume in his hat and sword at his side, etc,) walking with their ladies, and the fourth panel is of two musicians, one playing a drum, the other a flute or other woodwind. Around the top are the words 'Gin (or maybe Fin) gut er Frunk (or Trunk, its written in olde english type script) Marht Alte jung.' There are fleur-de-lis type decorations and stylized circles around the bottom. Inscribed on the bottom is the # 1080 or 1030 (hard to tell which) and under that, the number 4. What have I got here?

Thanks Jon! My husband is working on getting a picture of my 'treasure' and it should be posted sometime next week! And if you think the stein is something, you should see my clock that also doubles as the scales of justice!

It sounds like a Serenade or Troubadour stein/mug. I have one in green slag glass that sounds almost like yours only the words on mine are:

Jmer wirb.das Gluckistm??

Have fun, Michele

Michele,

What can you tell me about Seranade or or Troubadour steins? This 'treasure' is something my husband picked up in his travels in the Navy, but he doesn't remember where, why, etc? Thanks for your response!

Not much unfortunately... I picked mine up in a box lot and spent a little time on eBay looking for similar ones - which is where I saw the term 'Troubadour' and 'Serenade.'

Near as I can tell, they were popular around the turn of the century, but in the case of the slag glass ones, they were also reproduced in the 1960's.

HTH, Michele

Serenade, or Troubador as it is sometimes called, is believed to have been produced by Greentown Glass and by McKee & Brothers. Greentown produced them in a transparent emerald green, the dull opaque green was probably McKee.

One researcher, Dr. Ruth Herrick, suggested that chocolate Serenade mugs were first shown at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. Later, this was believed that it was unlikely, because the creator of chocolate glass, Jacob Rosenthal, was then factory manager of a new plant in Evansville, Indiana & the National Glass Company, which owned the chocolate formula, was near bankruptcy. No printed material on the fair mentions chocolate glass.

The Serenade mug is found in 3 sizes, 4 3/4' tall, 5' tall & a gallon master stein with pouring lip. All 3 mugs were shown in a 1902 McKee catalog in chocolate.

There are also mugs called Indoor Drinking Scene (Tavern) & Outdoor Drinking Scene (Castle) produced by Greentown in opaque Nile green. These are 5', 5 3/4' & 8 1/2' tall. Also there is a handleless variety & some have a pouring spout.

The Outdoor is scarce in Nile green, some handles have 24 dots on each side, some have 21, due to the use of several different moulds. There is also a variation of foliage, sometimes cattails & sometimes pointed leaves.

Then, again, your stein may not be any of these. I own the Serenade set in chocolate. I could show you pics of these & from a book, if you'd like to compare them to your stein, but it would be the middle of next week at the earliest before I could get to it. Debbie

husband picked up in his etc? Thanks for your

Michele, Can you tell me your source for this information? I collect slag & chocolate glass & am not aware of any Serenade items produced in slag, let alone reproduced. Other companies produced chocolate, such as Westmoreland for Levay, Imperial & Fenton, but as far as I know, this pattern was only produced by McKee & Brothers & possibly Greentown.

Hang on... scanning an old newspaper article. <grin>
http://home.cfl.rr.com/last2k/images/green.jpg

It's about 75K (had to keep the text readable). Basically it says that Greentown made the green slag mugs before 1903, but that in 1969, someone started repro'ing them by making a new mold out of an old mug.

Here's a pic of the one I have - perhaps you can tell if it's one of the repros? It came in a box lot with the newspaper article, so I'm assuming it isn't real . <g>
http://home.cfl.rr.com/last2k/images/grnmug3.jpg

Have fun, Michele

As usual when I see that someone has Greentown Glass I am nile green with envy!! Beautiful.

Okay, the article says 'green slag-type'. I presume they are referring to Nile green, which is a slag-type base color, but no contrasting swirls of color that slag has.

Since the ad stated that the new ones have a translucent bottom, rather than opaque, you could best answer that. The color looks too green to me to be original, Nile green is more of a lime. Too bad they didn't mention who started producing it again in 1969.

Thanks a bunch for the info.

Maryann, I'm not quite sure it's real... the glass is opaque unless you hold it up to a very bright light, then shadows are visible on both the sides and bottom... my mind is having trouble with 'opaque' vs. 'translucent' lately. <grin>

Have fun, Michele