Mark View M111107

Despite what some people may claim, this mark has not yet been identified. What we can say is that the marks shown here clearly belonged to a distributor or retailer, since some of the items still bear the original manufacturer marks. There are three main misinterpretations of the ASRO mark:

One claim states that it was actually connected to the Arabia Finland brand. This is nonsense, even though some Arabia items carry an additional mark reading "FAIENCE ASRO" (see Marks section). However, "similar is not the same" applies to names too, and the German ASRO has nothing to do with the one used on Arabia wares.

Another claim refers to Colditz, based on the assumption that the item number found on one item was"used the same font as the Colditz factory". It is known that ASRO marks also appear on producer-marked wares, so the item could have been made by the Colditz factory and customer-marked for ASRO. It should also be borne in mind that the font in question was indeed something of an industry standard and was therefore used by dozens of factories (including Annaburg and at least two Czech kitchen canister producers) due to its scalability and readability in impressed, ink-stamped or transfer-applied form.

Finally, ASRO was claimed to be the trademark of A. Schlegel & Co. from Röslau in Bavaria. I had never heard of the factory before, and I became curious when all my reference material came up blank. The local trade register finally confirmed that the only porcelain-related factory in Röslau was Gebrüder Winterling. A visitor claimed that, based on this story, the ASRO owner had actually been a former employee of the Gebrüder Winterling factory and had taken inspiration for his own mark from their laurel wreath marks.

Overall, everything I have found out there so far has been nothing more than plain guesswork or made-up nonsense.