The manufacture of pewter was very important in Ried. The first master pewterer is named as Wendelin Pürck in 1593. Four generations of the Jelle family carried on the trade of pewterer in Ried from about 1650 to 1754. Their workshop was in Hauptplatz 3.  

All tableware, from plates, serving dishes, jugs and pitchers through to cutlery, was cast from pewter. Damaged articles were immediately re-melted so very few articles made by the old pewter craftsmen survive today.    

At first, the pewterers mixed the metal themselves. Lead was added to brittle tin. As lead is heavier than tin and as pewter articles were sold by weight at that time, unscrupulous craftsmen added as much lead as possible. However, the guilds were soon appointed to inspect products to protect the user from tableware with an excessive lead content. Every pewterer in a guild had to mark his goods with his own stamp. The assay office added its own mark, showing the place of origin of the goods. The mark of the Ried assay office is the Ried coat of arms with the Bavarian chequers (or the branch with the three leaves) and the boot. 

The reproduction of the Ried painter Wilhelm Dachauer shows the work-shop of Fridolin Krausmann (1879-1968) which was at number 8 in the Bayrhammergasse. He was Ried’s last pewterer and made, amongst other objects, lids for glass and stoneware jugs. On the right is a journeyman cleaning and de-burring a lid after casting and on the right is the master pewterer busy polishing one of his products.

Works by Dachauer are on display in the museum gallery.