Nearly every amateur/collector/dealer will recognise items with transfer decorations based on earlier oil paintings in the "courting couple" style of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Angelika Kaufmann or Antoine Watteau, as the cheap (and even then long royalty-free) transfers were sold over and over again, reappearing on items from dozens of different factories and decoration studios not only throughout Europe but even in the United States and eventually Japan. And while it is easy to accept that transfer material was a regular commodity in these cases, it is often overlooked that the transfer sheet market was not only frequented by decorators and studios, but also served regular manufacturers, sometimes with strange results.
Among a few other examples, it may be noted that both Alboth & Kaiser (Kronach) and Jaeger & Co. (Marktredwitz) once shared certain transfer patterns by chance. This of course led to two unrelated companies offering different items with the same pattern. This was not only confusing for the domestic market at the time, but still leads to puzzled faces when looking at certain series of the US importer/distributor/retailer Ebeling & Reuss (Philadelphia). So I thought it would be a good idea to shed some light on the matter.
The whole situation was the result of the flourishing business in designs and ready-made transfer sheets, which is still largely unknown outside the world of printing and may therefore require some explanation. If a factory wishing to use transfer decorations did not have its own design department or transfer printing facilities, the required designs were ordered through regular printers or their travelling agents. Sometimes it was simply a matter of being approached by a printer who had just acquired a new design and was looking for a potential buyer. In fact, it was not uncommon for printers to have a large number of finished samples in stock; some even employed scouts to actively seek out new material.
Depending on the situation and the design, the customer could either buy the exclusive rights to a design (which was relatively expensive) or decide to buy only a certain number of printed sheets. The latter option was much cheaper, of course, but there was always the possibility that other factories might eventually use the same design.
It must be remembered that copyright in form/design was only possible if a producing factory was also the legal owner of a design in its entirety; the mere purchase of a certain number of sheets was not sufficient, as it was a non-exclusive deal, and therefore items bearing such a design could not be protected by design, as all rights relating to the design/transmission, especially reproduction and sale in any form, remained with the printer.
Cases where German manufacturers actually took the cheaper route and created potential pattern clashes are few and far between, but they do exist. Let us look again at the example of Alboth & Kaiser and Jaeger & Co. as this pattern clash also influenced Ebeling & Reuss. It is no secret that the "1599" series sold by Alboth & Kaiser after World War II has exactly the same transfers as a series sold by Jaeger & Co. in the same period. What really makes people scratch their heads is the fact that the latter were sold as part of the "Harvest" series by Ebeling & Reuss. The "Harvest" series, on the other hand, is very similar to the Ebeling & Reuss "Orchard" series in both body and pattern. This can lead to further confusion when items from the "Harvest" series are listed as "Orchard" or vice versa, plus the fact that mixed sets are sometimes sold as one.
I never intended to create anything like a cross-reference list for cases like the above, but another prominent case was brought to my attention by Christy Greene. While looking for more information on a set of cups and saucers produced and marked by Retsch & Co. of the town of Wunsiedel (Bavaria), she came across a very well-known twin pattern: Edelstein's pattern "16831" aka "Lorraine". Different moulds, of course, but definitely the same transfers.
My point is that there are often very simple explanations for all sorts of situations in which less educated people might start making up nonsense, for example claiming that one or other item must be "fake". As we can see, it is very easy to bark up the wrong tree.
[ Version 1.09 ]
© 2004-2026 C.S.Marshall, all rights reserved