The workshop of Franz Obermeier sits at the end of a gravel road in Ruhpolding, where the Chiemgau Alps fold into dark pine forest. I arrived last November to a room that smelled of wet clay and linden wood. Obermeier, seventy-three, was hunched over a potter's wheel, his hands grey to the wrist, shaping a half-liter stein with the kind of attention one gives to a prayer.
A Kiln That Hasn't Cooled Since 1847
The Obermeier family has fired their salt-glaze kiln continuously for over eighty years. The technique — common across Franconia and the Oberpfalz — involves throwing rock salt into the kiln at peak temperature, creating the distinctive orange-peel texture that Bavarian stoneware is known for from Regensburg to Garmisch.
"We don't make souvenirs," Obermeier told me, setting the stein aside to dry. "We make vessels. There is a difference. A souvenir is forgotten in a drawer. A vessel is used until it breaks, and then it is mourned."