Hard Hammered Copper Aquarium from the 1920s

The Museum of Aquarium and Pet History is offered many historical pet artifacts from time to time. Some we purchase and some we don’t. (And some are donated to the museum). When we first saw this hand-hammered copper aquarium we thought it was a “one-off” made by a hobbyist maybe in the 1940 or 1950s. We decided to pass on this tank but then while doing some research on aquarium ornaments in a 1920s Relpaw aquarium catalog low and behold we found this aquarium on the first catalog page!! Turns out it was made in small production numbers by hand and imported from Germany in the 1920s by the Nicholas Wapler company under his trade name “Relpaw” (his last name spelled backward). This was a happy accident!