History of the Foundry – and a Bathtub @museum.de

Take a moment to run your fingers over the surface of the bathtub: the enamel forms a smooth and shiny coating. But if you reach under the rim of the bathtub, you’ll be able to feel the roughness of the cast iron from which the bathtub was made.

The foundry first started producing sanitary ware such as bathtubs, washbasins, sinks and shower trays in 1870. Take a look at the pictures to the left of the doorway. They show the process involved in manufacturing a bathtub: from the moulds in which the bathtubs were cast all the way to the enamelling process.

Enamelling such a large, curved object was an art in itself. Enamellers dusted the fine powder very evenly across on the surface – which required a lot of experience and skill, especially since it had to all be done in a single pass. Starting afresh would inevitably have led to variations in the thickness of the enamel layer.

Then, the item to be enamelled, which was now covered in a very fine layer of enamel powder, had to be heated in a furnace. That fused the enamel to the base material, in this case, cast iron.

Thale enamel had an excellent reputation: Löwenemail (or Lion Enamel) was one of the best-known brands, famous for its excellence. Until 1969, the factory delivered about 30,000 bathtubs a year, some even with the traditional claw feet – in this instance lion's paws! The foundry had been in operation for 99 years when it was shut down. The building was demolished and replaced by a modern workshop for Container and Apparatus Construction.