Sierra Loew
Picture a home with shelves and shelves of mugs, stacked three deep, in every color you can imagine. Every morning, someone reaches to the back of a shelf and pulls out a surprise. That’s life in the home of Dan and Janice Lein, and this month we got to welcome them to Deneen Pottery for a tour of where it all begins.
A Collection Born at the Pancake House
Dan’s collection started with a simple pairing: good food and good mugs. He has eaten at Original Pancake House restaurants across the country, and at some point he decided he wanted a mug from every city where he’d had a meal. “I’ll just start searching eBay until I can find a mug for the city that I ate in the restaurant,” he told Niles, our CEO. “I ordered them up. Checked it off.”
Then he made it official. “I’m a statistician. I have binders full of facts,” Dan said with a laugh. He keeps a digital record of every state and the date of every visit. His collection started with the Minnesota mugs and grew from there, with stops in Dallas, Chicago, and San Diego along the way. In San Diego, they brought home some big purple pieces that have never been used. “What am I going to use this for? I don’t eat that much food in a bowl,” Dan joked. “But it’s there, you know.”
Number 81
On the day of the tour, Dan added one more to the shelf: mug number 81, a pretty light brown. It was a color he didn’t have yet, which is exactly what he looks for. “I’ve had the off green, the lime green, the yellow, the blues, purples. I look for different colors.”
That’s good news for a collector, because we love coming up with new glazes. When Niles shared that his dad started the company with just three colors (navy blue, burgundy, and our glossy blue), Dan was thrilled. “I’m so grateful that you just keep coming up with different colorations,” he said. Today at Deneen Pottery, we offer over 150 different glaze colors!
The Daily Mug Pick
Dan may be the collector, but Janice is the curator. She doesn’t drink coffee, but she loves picking his mug each morning. “I pull one out of the back and, oh, that’s a color! It’s a surprise every day.,” she said.
Ask Dan what he loves most about our mugs and he doesn’t hesitate: “The quality of it. It’s just comfortable to drink out of. The handles are just perfect.”
A Dream Come True
For Dan, the tour was the best part of the trip. “I had always wished that I could come back and go through your plant to see how it all is made,” he said. “It was my highlight of the trip.”
Janice summed it up perfectly: “You made his dream come true.”
Niles shared something his mom, our co-founder, always says: mugs create conversation. “Mugs are the foundation for making connections,” he said. “I’m happy we made this connection.”
We couldn’t agree more. Thank you, Dan and Janice, for stopping by and for giving so many of our mugs a home. We can’t wait to see what number 82 looks like!
Sierra Loew
