The story of the beer dog

August 31, 2012 — 2 Comments

The best thing about collecting antiques is, you are collecting pieces of history and sometimes personal stories which would never be known to someone else than the owner and maybe their family. And too often the stories die with the owners of the antique objects.

Not this story.

It is the story of a Danish family’s absinthe glass. The family owned the absinthe glass since 1920, when their great-grandparents got six of them as a wedding gift.

They don’t know whether their great-grandparents and the following generations used them for absinthe.

However, after more than a half century the glasses were passed down to the uncle, who gladly used them, well, for beer schnapps. Because the small reservoir (2 cl) was just perfect for schnapps. He called his absinthe glass “ølhunden”, which means ‘the beer dog’ in Danish.