Water filter "Berkefeld Filter".

Unmarked. Design: Albin MÜLLER, 1912, made by Reinhold Merkelbach or S.P. Gerz.

Fine stoneware, beige glazed, painted brown-black (so-called ivory stoneware). H approx. 55.5 cm.

Rhenish stoneware. Large cylindrical vessel with metal tap and two profiled handles on the sides, Art Nouveau relief ornamentation in brown and blue. Domed lid with pressed ball knob, wide recessed inner ring for hollow cylinder insert with filter candles, but missing here. Signs of age, wall and mouth finely hairline cracked, tap loosened, lid with fine glaze crack on the rim, without insert.

The Berkefeld filter is a system for water treatment using a precoat filter. Invented by Wilhelm Berkefeld in 1891, the filter was a hollow cylinder made of porcelain with filter cartridges made of burnt diatomaceous earth. Filters of this type were used successfully for the first time in 1892 during the cholera epidemic in Hamburg. To this day, filter systems are manufactured using the process invented by Wilhelm Berkefeld, albeit with modern materials. Due to their robustness, the filters are particularly popular in international disaster relief. They are used, for example, in the Emergency Response Units of the International Red Cross or the EU Civil Protection Mechanism. See: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkefeld-Filter.

Literature : Schimanski, Jürgen: Westerwälder Steinzeug des Jugendstils, p. 87, fig. 114.

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