Reader's Corner with Spire Balls and Table Still @museum.de

Oh! It's you again! You gave me quite a scare. I was just engrossed in the extensive collection of publications available in the reading corner.

Let me translate some of the titles for you: "The Roof and its Craft", "Buildings, Roofs, Craftsmen", "The Practical Metal Roofer", or perhaps the "Big Handbook for Installers and Plumbers" and more than 20 years of the trade magazine "Baumetall" – Architectural Metal.

If you still have a question after our tour of the museum – and can read German – you'll definitely find the answer here!

And if you happen to know what this weird little piece of equipment is (which was made by master coppersmith Adrian), you're certainly not going to become bored. This miniature work of art is a fully functional pot still ... for domestic use, as it were.

Let's take a look...

The device on the left, which is like a figure eight, consists of the flask or pot – at the bottom – and the cap – at the top – in which the rising vapour is collected. There would normally be a small spirit burner under the pot. The fermented mash goes into the pot and is heated until the alcohol evaporates. Via the cap and the lyne arm, that's the slender pipe, the vapour reaches the condenser, where it cools down. Then the liquid runs into the cup at the bottom right. And you've made your first schnapps!

But... if you've overindulged, it's easy to get funny ideas. Have you seen the spheres suspended above the reader's corner? They once adorned church spires, administrative buildings or palaces at great heights. And of course, they were made by skilled sheet metalworkers. Often, they contained some minor treasures: coins or brief reports were tucked away in them and then spent centuries high above people's heads. They were only a problem if marauding gangs or regular soldiers – whether plastered or not – hit on the idea of practising their shooting skills from below and aimed at the spire balls. You can still see the shot holes in some of the balls even now.

It really is no way to treat other people's work – so disrespectful!