Mettlach, Villeroy & Boch

The Villeroy & Boch factory in Mettlach, Germany, where Emmy’s cousins live, has been busily producing ceramic table settings, bath room fixtures, ceramic tile, and other products for the 250 years since this company was founded. The headquarters building is a mid1700s red limestone Benedictine Abbey with a beautiful Baroque façade. When viewed from the far bank of the Saar River, the Abbey building dominates the view and fortunately blocks the sight of a half-mile of modern factories beyond. Three generations of Emmy’s “Cousins” have worked for this company, and at the time of her retirement, Emmy’s Cousin Toni was the secretary for Herr von Boch.

Each year that we traveled to Germany, Emmy bought a variety of dish-ware from Villeroy & Boch. Over the years only three or four small items have been broken in the dozen suitcases (chock full of dishes padded by our clothes) that we have checked on the airplane, but all the packages we have mailed have arrived in California with no breakage.

One year Emmy’s friend Carol, asked if she would mind buying a complete set of dishes, Villeroy & Boch’s Amapola pattern, and spare no expense. I thought that spending someone else’s money should have satisfied Emmy’s craving for Villeroy & Boch products, but it just whetted her appetite.

In the antique store in the farming community of Baddechenstedt, Germany, we bought a vase made in the Villeroy & Boch factory in Dresden many, many years ago. That factory was destroyed during WW II, and never reopened.

For several years the Asta Factory “outlet store” in Annweiler, Germany, was a wonderful place for Emmy to buy enameled metal cook-ware in patterns and colors that exactly matched the porcelain dish-ware, made by Villeroy & Boch in Mettlach. She was able to find several pots, a clock, and a teakettle that matched her dishes, and also bought some as gifts.

While the Berlin Wall stood, several antique subway cars were parked in the then unused, elevated Nollendofpl S-Bahn station, and that was the Berlin flea/antique market. We saw a set of scales made from ceramic by Villeroy & Boch in Mettlach in 1900. We didn’t want to pay $175 for it, but since then, we wish we had. When the Wall fell, this station was renovated so the S-Bahn could now operate in the formerly divided city.