Elbogen
Elbogen, Bohemia · Porcelain · also recorded as Haidinger
Transcribed by Igor Kukolj from Chaffers, William. Marks and Monograms on European and Oriental Pottery and Porcelain, 1891, Reeves & Turner, London, p.476. Scan: archive.org/details/marksmonogramson00chaf (leaf n495). Checked 21 August 2026.
Marks
Plate I
from 1815
An arm holding a scimitar · stamped without colour · engraved in the sourceChaffers 1891, p.476Chaffers blazons it precisely: 'heraldically or, a dexter arm habited gules, holding a scimitar arg.' The device is a pun on the town — Elbogen means elbow — which is why an arm appears on porcelain with no other heraldic reason to be there.
What the source records
- Established in 1815 for the manufacture of hard-paste porcelain.Chaffers 1891 · p.476
- The works are celebrated especially for the production of their director and proprietor, M. Haidinger.Chaffers 1891 · p.476
- The mark is stamped without colour — impressed rather than painted.Chaffers 1891 · p.476
Why this differs from other listings
The mark is a canting device: Elbogen is German for elbow, so the factory signed itself with a bent arm. Knowing that turns an obscure pictorial stamp into something you can reason about rather than merely match, and Chaffers supplies the full heraldic blazon rather than a vague description.
The source page
What this entry does not establish
- Chaffers gives no closing date and no variant marks for the works.
- That the mark is impressed rather than painted is stated for the mark shown; it does not follow that every Elbogen piece is marked the same way.