Auction Watch 70

Not such a huge variety this week, as it has been a shorter week due to a public holiday on Monday, but some high quality items to be found regardless. The Midwinter design in the first photo is a real stunner!



What a superb design - MIDWINTER part dinner set c 1950s

...the ever popular Figgjo Market design - quite a few pieces coming up this week



A number of very good Carlton Ware "Royal"pieces
love this bowl, and  the jug below!

Handmade marbles

I couldn't think of anything more boring than fishing I'm sorry....but I love this fishing basket! Looks
like it has hardly ever been used.

Who remembers Memphis Design c 1980s? Don't see it for sale very often.  

Over the top but it works. Mailing (UK) lustre ware jug

KPM Retro Vase - great modenist shape, attractive design

I've never seen teak with this sort of decoration before - it is by John Grimes (Australia)

Beit Hayotser Floor Vase

This spectacular looking vase - (large enough to be called a floor vase) was one I picked up at auction last week. It is one of the best pieces by Israeli mid-century pottery Beit Hayotser I've seen in real life.

Such a great shape, complimented by the gorgeous line decoration with such a decorative Middle-Eastern feel to it. The pattern reminds me a bit of Henna body decoration.

 

A Poole of Delphis

I purchased one piece of Poole Pottery from a group which was for sale at auction last week, and I'm glad I did. It is one of the most impressive Poole pieces I have had. A real pool of colour!

It is from the "Delphis" series, and full of bold colour, pattern and such a 1960s looking design.  This series of "carved" bowls is a sub-group within the Poole Delphis range.

The Poole Museum has a great informational website with a comprehensive history of Poole Pottery,  with wonderful images of some of the best Poole designs. From the website:

The name Delphis has become associated with the standard range of shapes and designs produced by the new Craft Section at Poole Pottery which was opened in May 1966. The range was a natural progression from the ‘Delphis Collection’ of studio pottery in standardised shapes launched in October 1963. New glazes were introduced following a visit by Guy Sydenham and Tony Morris to the Vallauris factory in France in 1966. These were more reliable (and probably safer) than those previously available. Production employed a team of paintresses under the initial guidance of Tony Morris. The bold designs and colourful glazes were instantly in tune with 1960's fashion and such was the popularity of the range that the factory struggled to keep pace with demand

There is also a fantastic and much more detailed site  - Robs Poole Pottery Collection - where Rob has so much good quality information like DATES of the shapes, and great photos of some of the DELPHIS DESIGNS

Also very importantly, Rob has collected most of the Poole Pottery decorators marks or cyphers HERE, which is often the hardest thing to find when researching pottery.

The piece I purchased is shape 88 (an earlier form) and signed by Christine Tate, who was a section supervisor for the Delphis range from 1966-1970. 

Easy to see with pieces like this, why this iconic range has such a following.

Lava Lovers Bowl - Glit

The terms "Lava" or "Fat Lava" is commonly applied to much mid-century West German pottery, even though there may be nothing much lava-like about it. This piece however you can certainly call lava because it uses real lava in the glaze!  I picked it up out of curiosity from an auction a few weeks ago.

At first I was misreading the markings on this bowl as GHP and couldn't read if it was Ireland or Iceland ..but as there was nothing Irish looking about it at all, I did a search for "Lava Bowl GHP Iceland" and bingo! up came the maker.

I was misreading the GHP, which turns out to GLIT. It is a piece made by Glit Iceland which was founded by Ragnar Kjartansson  in 1958. A pottery which seems to have specialised in using Icelandic volcanic lava (pumice, rock, ash) in glazes on their pottery.

I found a short entry on Kjartannson on Wikipedia:

Ragnar Kjartansson (1923 - 1989) was an Icelandic sculptor. He was a member of the Icelandic Sculptors Society which he established in the Icelandic capital in 1972 along with Hallsteinn Sigurðsson, Jon Gunnar Árnason Þorbjörg Pálsdóttir and others. He was also the founder of Glit, Ltd., the only ceramic factory in the country. One of his works is located along the main road in Eskifjördur, commemorating the mariners who drowned at sea.

A search online will yield many very attractive looking pieces from this Icelandic Pottery.

The red in the centre of this largish bowl contrasts beautifully with the green outside, and really goes to make it look like a piece of molten lava cooling down.

Auction Watch 69

There hasn't been a lot of good Danish Vintage pottery around lately, but there is a great variety of really interesting pieces coming up this week which I have shortlisted here from 2 catalogues.

There are several auction lots of lovely hand painted stoneware from a pottery I haven't heard of before - Buchan, Scotland - the pieces have an almost French provincial look about them.  The first 3 images are of Buchan pottery - the first in with a design called "Brittany" and the second with a design called "Costa brava".  The remainder have a comment under each image.

 

 

Thomas of Germany, a nice looking set. Love the shapes. If it was a brighter colour maybe...



6 eccentric looking Italian ramekins, with a cat playing a fiddle - I wonder if there
were more to the set - with a cow jumping over the moon ? :)



Beautiful looking Art Deco coffee set from Burleigh UK.



A large Beit Hayotser - (Israel) Display Vase



LOOK! A Susie Cooper, Kestrel Shaped teapot.



Quite a nice piece of vintage glass in amethyst colours



An Arabia Finland cow jug is always a good purchase - always a competitive purchase
and top dollar though.



a 1970's piece of copper wall art



A very large Denby (Danesby) 1920s hand-formed jug - estimate
between $100-$200 which sounds quite a bit too much.

Bright and Bling- An anodised cocktail set of glasses and ice bucket!

Dümler & Breiden x 2

I didn't intend on purchasing anything this week, but I managed to end up with these 2 lovely Dümler & Breiden pieces which were too good to ignore. They are part of the "Terra" Series.

Dümler & Breiden (1883-1992 was one of the many companies in the Höhr-Grenzhausen region of Germany and they produced a huge range of styles and designs over the years, from traditional to brightly coloured Pop Art pieces.  It is one of the West German pottery makers that has an easily identifiable stamp at least (well most times!) with 2 crossed swords - one with a D, the other a B.

The first one is my favourite, it has such a delicate, almost Islamic style of pattern about it. The second has the "chattering" style of decoration often seen on D&B pieces.