Often Imitated Never Duplicated

With the Hofbrauhaus' noteriety and success often comes others trying to imitate and capitalize on that success. When they started to mark their drinking vessels and other things with an HB some other competing breweries seemed to follow suit. In 1879 the Hofbrauhaus trademarked their logo to eliminate this. Even though the logo was trademarked other breweries still seemed to push the envelope creating logos that were still very similar, but obviously just different enough to get away with it. Below are a couple of images of steins from a competing brewery that I also initially believed belonged to the Hofbrauhaus, but in fact were from another brewery, proven in the postcard depicting the steins. I have seen a couple of these steins appear on eBay having an HB placed on it at some point by a previous owner, which in one case was apparent from the hinge which had been damaged during the lid switch, and the other pictured below did not have a picture that showed the back of the stein which would likely give evidence of whether or not a lid was switched. I would hazard a guess that either the stein had no lid to begin with or the lid was switched based on the fact that the HB is screened on which is something done on HB steins later than 1939 when the Hofbrauhaus no longer was known as the Kgl. Hofbrauhaus, but rather the Staatl. Hofbrauhaus.



A Style of HB Stein I Hadn't Seen Before

Recently I came across a style of Hofbrauhaus stein that I had not encountered before. I was able to purchase the stein, but I have not been able to take a good look at it, since it is in transit. This style of HB stein seems to fall in between the more crudely etched HB steins with the trademarked logo on the lid and the stein featured in my "Bridging the Gap" post, that has a neatly etched blue HB on the body with no crown above it and the trademarked lid. Like these steins it has the trademarked logo on the lid, but the HB on the body has no crown above it and no colour. The style of the HB is slightly different than that of the one in the "Bridging the Gap" post. The stein however apparently has a stein mark by W.Wild as does the other two, but I have not seen it to determine which of his stein marks it is. I am not sure how many of this type of stein was produced, but it is the first one that I have encountered. It is numbered with the #8095, indicating it likely had seen use in the Hofbrauhaus. I am inclined to believe that the stein likely dates from in between 1888 and 1895.