While staying at a wonderful hotel (Gasthaus Goldener Greifen) in Rothenburg, I saw some beautiful pottery plates in their dining room. When I asked if they knew where I could buy them, they directed me to a shop front on the south side of Rodergasse (that's a street name) very near one of the city gates. The name of the place is Ehler Topferei (topferei is pottery and the owner's name is Fritz Ehler). The shop was closed when I went there but a small sign said I could go around the corner to Wenggasse (another street name) where he has his shop. There is a small hand made ceramic sign on his shop's door. I opened the door to find a working pottery shop with kilns and pottery materials being worked on. I called out to see if anyone was there and Fritz came down to greet me. He is an extremely pleasant man whose English is about as good as my German, which is pretty mediocre. But we communicated well enough as I looked around the many shelves of finished bowls, vases, plates and other pottery he has made. His work is beautiful. I especially came to buy one of his plates with a German script rhyme on it. It is about 8" in diameter with a lovely boarder. It cost 31 euros. I also got a smaller dish for 8 euros. Most of what you can buy in town is not made there but here is a unique shop with hand made craft work that you purchase from the maker. This shop is well worth putting in the effort to find. I found almost no information online about it and even neighbors to the place were not too familiar with it. I highly recommend checking out Fritz Ehler's place. I am writing this as a satisfied traveler who found a treasure that I want to share.
Posted by
Washington DC
28090 posts
Thanks for posting about the Ehler shop. It's the sort of place I love to visit when I travel. I just wish pottery weighed less.
Posted by
Vancouver, WA
378 posts
Oh! I wish I'd seen this sooner. We are staying literally a block away, but leave town in the am. Next time
Posted by
Nanaimo, BC, Canada
172 posts
Great tip! I was in Rothenburg in November with old friends who live nearby and we checked that the small Print Shop was still in business. It featured in one of Rick's shows as possibly going out of business, much to his regret. Glad to report it is still there, on the right as you stumble downhill from the main square in the direction of the Ploenlein fountain. I have several of the hand coloured engravings of the area done by a Professor Probst long ago, but run off and coloured by the printshop owners each year. The windows of the shop were full of small engravings of animals when I went by. It is the sort of place that you need to find. Prints are easy to pack home. Just for fun, I also went back to the wall of cuckoo clocks in the Christmas Store on the main square and watched them all strike the hour, as I did with my son many years ago, before we bought one and had it shipped home. Winter in Rothenburg is atmospheric, and the Reiterlesmarkt is a very local Christmas Market in spite of the crowds of down-jacket tourists. My friends buy the Snowball cookies but I prefer sausages. A running race called the Lichterlauf turns off all the streetlights and has people racing with headlamps along an 8km route while their supporters eat and drink and watch the fires and torches flickering like long ago. Sadly, the city was also the SS headquarters at the end of WW2 and its court sentenced several citizens to hang for 'treason' in the last days of the war. That fact is never mentioned in the exhibit in the gate tower that describes the 'brutal' USAAF air raid on the city. Pity.