Image 020403-01-01
Used from 1870 onward.
Between 1870/1871, the Gebrüder Schütz Handelsgesellschaft from Olomuczan established this new factory as a clay deposit of high quality had been discovered at this location. Ludwig Richard Schütz took position as manager while Arnold Schütz started to manage the main factory in Olomuczan on his own.
Shortly after the split of the brother-owned original Handelsgesellschaft, Ludwig Richard Schütz renamed the factory he was now fully in charge of and also established the Filialfabrik für Steingut, Ludwig R. Schütz located in Greis (Griže) near Cilli.
His product range included "Schamotte und Schamottewaren" as well as stating "Spezialität: Steirische Bauern-Geschirre.". Telegraph address was simply Schütz Pletrowitsch at that time; the railroad freight station they used was the same as that for the Liboje and Greis subsidiaries (Sachsenfeld station).
Ludwig's daughter Paula by then had been married to a Mr. List for a while, a railway engineer at the German Reichsbahn. The couple already had a child when Paula died during the birth of their second child in 1903. Ludwig was devastated and never really recovered from the loss. He himself died in 1907, leaving his wife Maria and second daughter Marie Charlotta in charge.
In 1909, the company was still proudly advertized as "Produzent Steirischer Bauerntöpfereien in Cilli-Pletrowitsch" in the popular Handbuch der Keramikindustrie. The regular postal contact data had changed to Maria Schütz, the telegraph address had been altered to Schütz Maria Pletrowitsch accordingly. At this time their letter head stated that the business owned "Tonbergbaue in Flöhau Böhmen u. Liboje bei Cilli, Ton- und Quarz-Sandgruben in Dubovac[*] bei Karlstadt".
[*] The letter head clearly reads Dubovac. Various "experts" in this context state "Karlovac/Karlovec near Karlstadt" and it is obvious that they mindlessly copied that nonsense from each other as Karlovac is the Croatian (and Karlovec the Slovenian) name of Karlstadt itself.
Marie Charlotta Schütz in 1910 finally married her long-term relationship, the ceramicist Ludwig Lobe. His health never had been the best, however it still left the family in shock when he died of tuberculosis in 1911. But worse had to come : when the First World War broke out most business came to a standstill. And the situation did not improve after the war as businesses of Austrian or German origin were threatened by expropriation. As result, Marie Charlotta Schütz-Lobe decided to sell everything and retire (see Liboje).
The three marks show below can not be clearly attributed to either the Pletrowitsch or Liboje production location; these mark types are therefore shown on both pages.
Image 020403-01-01
Used from 1870 onward.
Image 020403-01-02
Used from 1890 onward.
Image 020403-01-03
Another example, showing that the U-Umlaut was not a plain "U".
Picture by Mary Alioto)
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