Knoedgen Keramik was a ceramic factory founded by Jakob Leopold Knoedgen in 1891 or 1892 at Weiherstraße, Ransbach, Germany. By 1910, the factory employed 45 workers1. The company produced steins with the impressed D.R.G.M No. 1000, but J.L.Knoedgen never applied or registered this “patent”, according to Deutscher Reichs-Anzeiger und Königlich Preussischer Staats-Anzeiger, the number belonging to an entirely different company1. Several versions of the JLK mark have been seen as marks both of the base and in the case of figural steins,