A Mug's Game

He loves his beer, so Anjan Rangaraj decided that he wanted to build a beer stein collection to drink it out of.

- Akhila Ranganna

ANJAN RANGARAJ CANNOT REMEMBER A TIME when he wasn’t collecting things. He was six when he began collecting marbles, and soon ran out of space to store them. Pigeons followed next, and despite the constraints of a small house, he managed to house at least 80 on his balcony. This was followed by thousands of match boxes. As Rangaraj grew older, he turned his attention to collecting and restoring vintage and classic motorcycles, about 20 of which he still possesses. He also has a 5000-strong collection of LPs, and today, the founder and CEO of the Chennai-based Catalyst Properties is the owner of close to a thousand beer steins, some encapsulating bits of history.

The word stein is an abbreviation of steinzeug, which means stoneware in German - stone was used to make beer mugs before the introduction of glass. Rangaraj first chanced upon them at a flea market in Berlin almost a decade ago. He was immediately drawn to them, and picked up close to 30 of them at one go. “I enjoy my beer,” says Rangaraj with a chuckle, when asked about what drew him to steins. “It’s good to use a nice stein or tankard to drink your beer, but then it became about the design, the craftsmanship and the history behind the different mugs.”