American Toby Jug Museum 

Elf stein produced by Merkelbach Manufaktur for W. Goebel Porzellanfabrik of Bavaria, Germany, circa 1980. An elf is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic folklore. In medieval Germanic-speaking cultures, elves generally seem to have been thought of as beings with magical powers and supernatural beauty, ambivalent towards everyday people and capable of either helping or hindering them. Elves of popular culture that emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries include the Christmas elves popularized during the late nineteenth century in the United States. Elves entered the twentieth-century high fantasy genre in the wake of works published by authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien which re-popularized the idea of elves as human-sized and humanlike beings.