A little West German

This is a very small piece of West German pottery, about the size of my hand. I've had it for a while - not quite knowing what to do with it as it is really too small to sell - and has a hairline crack.

Unusually it has been handmade and signed xx with a stamp "West Germany" - love the shape and design of it -  a very modernist shape, wish it was a bit larger though :)

New Listings in the Store

I've been busy the last day or two having a bit of a clean out and stock take, followed by listing a lot more pieces of pottery in my eBay store. I'm trying to get a wide spread of styles to cater for all tastes.

Here are some of my personal favourites, and over the next week many  many more to come. Some lovely pieces of Australian Studio Pottery by significant potters for those into that, and some classic Scandinavian gear.

Jeff Mincham - Blossom Vase 1984 - Sublime

Bendigo Pottery Urn c 1930

Denby Chevron Individual Casseroles 1963

Denby Chevron Coffee Pot 1963

1950's Bing & Grondahl Platter "Florarsblomst" 1950s

Rorstrand Sweden "Tuna" Pattern Teapot 1960's

Arabia Ali Footed Coffee Cup

Arabia Ali Sugar Bowl

Jump to the store HERE

Retro BBQ Set

I had a bit of a clean up over the weekend and came across this vintage melamine setting hidden in a corner that I had completely forgotten about.

It is a Tamco (Australia) "Hollywood" setting - I guess from the late 1950's or early 1960's.  I love melamine in oranges and reds - but Its not easy to find it in good condition. I notice it seems to be more much plentiful on eBay in the U.S than it does here, with a lot more pattern variety.

I also had this lovely bright orange tea set by the same maker last year, which sold as soon as I listed it in the store. Orange is always a popular colour no matter what the product it seems :)

New Vintage inspired work by Lucy King

Readers that have been with this blog for a while will remember the wonderful work I've shown previously by Lucy King in Melbourne, who often uses vintage pottery as an inspiration and material to make some very smart gear. (Have a look at the previous posts HERE)

Now in addition to her fantastic Jewellery range, Lucy has designed and released a range of melamine picnic/party ware using Vintage and Retro pottery patterns combined with her superb illustration/painting skills to come up with the wonderful patterns.

From Lucy's blog:

I've launched the collection with 10 different designs - created to mix and match with each other and to encourage a 'this-goes-with-that' approach. The range consists of three hand-painted watercolour floral designs (Audrey, Grace and Alice), three vintage ceramic designs (High Tea, Fancy a Cuppa and Tea Party), two retro graphic florals (Mabel in candy colourway or spearmint colourway) and two 1950s-esque polka-dot designs which coordinate with the whole collection. The plates are proudly Made in England in small quantities, and are designed to be used and enjoyed for sharing sweet or savoury treats with friends! Perfect for picnics, bbq's, camping and garden parties etc...... a shame the weather here in Melbourne isn't quite geared up for any of those activities yet!!

I just love the designs - all of which you can see in Lucy's new online shop.   There is also a range of wonderful CARDS that Lucy has in the shop, from her beautiful watercolours - with the same lovely vintage look about them.

I can't wait to see what amazing things Lucy comes up with next, her work is always so Joyful!



 
Images all Copyright Lucy King - not for use without permission

West German Bowl - from the Forum

This fantastic piece of West German pottery was posted in the Forum last week by Beetle, who found it in a charity shop for a bargain price of 5 Pounds.  Well done, because its not often you find bargains in Charity shops these days - well here at least - if anything most Pottery in charity shops now tend to be over-priced....unless they have no idea what it is. The bowl is a lovely 12" in diameter. Great colours and textures.

I have to eat my words from last week regarding that Lime Green West German  piece I showed! . I listed it on eBay and it sold very quickly - and attracted a larger amount of watchers than any of the other pieces. :}

As you may have noticed the site has had a revamp within Blogger, and all seems to be working now. Fingers crossed it stays that way so I don't have to move it. If you are having trouble posting comments - remember my suggestion from the other day - try a different browser.

Glynbourne - by Glyn Colledge - Denby

I've been wanting to get hold of a Denby Glynbourne piece for ages, but here they rarely come up. Finally one came up on eBay recently here. They are quite easily available in England, but they are quite weighty - making postage prohibitive.

Glynbourne Ware (not to be confused with Glyndebourne ware) was designed by Glyn Colledge in 1960. It was marketed as a prestige product and sold until about the 1970's when the exotic designs of Gill Pemberton and David Yorath were more favoured.

Glynbourne continues the long Denby tradition of traditional high quality stoneware, hand thrown and hand decorated. Studio Pottery at its best. Each piece was handpainted in natural tones of browns and greens with a simplified decorative pattern of leaves....the glaze is just wonderful to the touch.  It has continued to be a very collectable range to the present day.

Blogger Update: I found out quite by accident that I can comment on blogs and respond to comments on Blogger blogs now, by using Safari - quite bizarre. So if you are having the same problem that I was give it a go - and hopefully it works for you.

Over the next few days I am going to be playing with the template for this blog - so don't be surprised if one day you come to look at it and wonder what is going on - all the content will be here, but I'm just trying a few other templates to see if they resolve the remaining Blogger bugs - otherwise it will be Wordpress - here we come!

Oh - Today is the SHORTEST day of the year here YAY! can't wait for sunlight and warmth again.

Carmelite Pottery

Readers might remember late last year I did a short post on the Silent Order of Carmelite Nuns of Adelaide HERE.

I collect their work but it is hard to come by these days -especially since they ceased production of  pottery about 25 years ago, but very occasionally it comes up at Auctions and sometimes on eBay. Last week I was fortunate enough to get hold of these superb spice canisters at auction. What attracts me to their work is that it is always just so perfect, precise and "mathematical" and always decorated with a beautiful minimalistic style. Even the typography on these canisters is  perfect and neat. Additionally they are also glazed on the inside.

I would be really interested to hear from anyone who knows of any other Orders around the world who produced pottery - something fascinating about the whole thing.

Re comments on Blogger ! - AGGGGH-  how FRUSTRATING it is currently. Some people can post comments, others can not. I can not post comments or comment on other blogger blogs! Blogger seems to be ignoring the problem - hoping it goes away - but its now been well over a month.

I am underway in moving this blog across to a self-hosted WORDPRESS site, and will let you know when it happens - I/m hoping it can be a seamless transition, and be finalised before something ELSE goes wrong with Blogger.

MEANWHILE - If you find you can not make a comment and want to you can always email me, or leave a comment on the FACEBOOK page for this blog or on my TWITTER for those tweeters amongst you.  When I have moved across to WP you will be able to earn rewards for comments on FB, Twitter etc through a scheme I've joined (which you can see running on my Retro Graphic Design Blog already  )

A few more West German pieces

Continuing on from yesterday, these are some more of the West German pieces I picked up on Tuesday at auction. Love the first two, but I really don't like the green of the last one but It came with the first two (sorry green colour lovers!) - It would have to be one of the worst colours from the sixties and seventies.

Such a luxurious crimson red, contrasting with the lava strip and plain brown body

Another HUGE one, the glaze condition is superb.

Ughh. Lime Green, what else can I say.

West German Pieces

I haven't come across any West German pottery at auctions for ages...in fact it's been quiet all round for a few weeks...but all of a sudden this week there were multiple amounts of West German Pottery to choose from - so I picked up a few which I will put up in the store soon.  I'll post some more tomorrow, but I think these 3 are my favourites out of the ones I purchased.

Love the stripes and colours of this piece.

Great texture and colour combination

This one is HUGE. - about 45cm Tall x 17 cm wide - could almost be mistaken

for a piece of Bitossi.

Soholm Wall Plaque - Noomi Backhausen

I found this recently on eBay and It's so hard to resist a Danish stoneware wall plaque - especially one by Noomi Backhausen - so I bought it. This one of the best I have seen by her, and it is just so full of such beautiful colours, textures and shapes - in the typical Backhausen style. The colours are much brighter and the white much whiter in real life and even better, this one still has the original Soholm sticker.

See my previous post which has some of  Noomi's work HERE

Danesby (Denby) Electric Blue

In 1924-5 Bourne-Denby as the company was then known, introduced a decorative line called "Danesby Ware" of which the "Electric Blue" range was one of the outstanding and most popular lines.

Originally inspired by the shapes of an Aladdin's lamp, the outstanding feature of this range was the beautiful blue streaky and high gloss glaze. It was produced well into the 1930's, and is still popular amongst collectors today. Being stoneware it has lasted incredibly well. The pieces I have photographed here are flawless - I picked them up at auction about 2 years ago - but haven't seen any since, although there seems to be quite a bit of it available in the U.K. They are such classical, elegant and beautiful shapes.

The Danesby stamp is a hand written  by Albert Colledge, and was used on a number of series of Danesby Art Ware.

The official Denby site has a brief history of the pottery, where the Electric Blue range gets a mention, and also has an image of this lovely poster from the time. It is also a great website to just read.

Arne Bang Stoneware Urn

Woohoo! - finally, I managed to buy a piece of Arne Bang stoneware at an auction a few weeks ago. The work of Arne Bang (b 1901- d? ) is highly collectible Danish studio pottery, especially  his stoneware vases and bowls produced between 1930-1960 from his own studio.

Arne Bang's output is entirely original and unlike any other Danish Ceramicist. His considerable output focused on technical excellence and innovation while developing wholly unique designs that are still unmatched in imagination and excellence. *

Most pieces of Arne Bang have a model number painted onto the bottom of the pot in brown or black glaze. The one I have is 301. Studio pieces also have his signature incised "AB" which this one does. Most work you can find today is from his own studio - but for a period in the 1920's-1930's he did some ceramic pieces for Holmgaard Glassworks.  He opened his own studio in 1932 which continued until about 1951.

From what I can gather this piece would have been produced in the late 1930's. The depth of colours, and its texture are just extraordinary - and like nothing else. The texture of the glaze I have seen referred to as "crocodile glaze".

This site in the U.K. has an extra-ordinary collection of Arne Bang for sale with some excellent photographs, and the book cited below is well worth purchasing if you are into collecting Scandinavian Art Pottery - it has superb photography as well.  At the time of writing this I notice Biblio (see Ad in right column) has at least 2 copies for sale at a price well below the new price.

Quote and source material from:
 "Scandinavian Art Pottery, Denmark & Sweden",(2nd edition) by Robin Hecht Mindardi, Schiffer books 2005
  ISBN 0 764322397

Denby Greenwheat, Albert Colledge, Part 2

Albert Colledge's son Glyn went on to become probably the best known and last at Denby of this family line, which started with Albert's great great Grandfather William Coulton, but that is a whole other story. The Colledge name literally means "Coal Ledge" which comes from the history of coal mining in the area (thank you Ms Pemberton!).

The Greenwheat design from Albert was one of the first "contemporary" designs after the restrictions and brown grey drabness of post World War II  lifted, and Denby's production was influenced by the introduction of new machinery and techniques for plate making. The firm now began to specialise in the production of dinnerware and tableware.

Greenwheat was a major boost for Denby, and showed a new confidence which the buying public loved. The confidence was reflected with having the addition of Albert's signature to the base of the pieces. Greenwheat was so different from anything else being sold at the time by other potteries.

The platter from this range shows off the brushwork at its Artistic best,

looking like a piece of Japanese calligraphy on rice paper.

Really like the large baking dishes from this and other Denby ranges.

Love the shape of this Vinegar bottle from the cruet set

Some of the Greenwheat pieces are single stamped

with Albert's decal signature, and other (I presume later ones)

are double stamped like this

To see a huge range of Denby Greenwheat pieces and shapes, China Search (UK) has a large range. I would also encourage any readers wanting to know more about Denby to buy the only authoratitive modern book:

Denby Pottery 1809-1997

Irene & Gordon Hopwood

ISBN 0 903685523

Denby Greenwheat, Albert Colledge, Part 1

Albert Colledge was born in 1891 and began work at Denby when he was thirteen, as a caster. He attended evening classes to improve his education, and had obvious artistic talent from this early age. When war broke out in 1914 he enlisted; and returned to Denby Pottery when the war ended. By 1923 he was in charge of the Pottery's decorating department, and he remained with Denby until 1963 when he retired at the age of 72. He died in 1972.

Albert Colledge's contribution to Denby was huge, and his immense level of skill and knowledge, and high standards were admired by everyone who worked at Denby. One of his later and very popular patterns was Greenwheat, designed in 1956 and produced until around 1976. It had the same white ground as Flair, which I adore - (but have only ever seen in photos.)

There is quite a bit more colour and detail to the pattern in

the "flesh"than I had thought was there. Also some exquisite

brushwork and delicacy of touch. This could almost be a

Japanese watercolour.

The "minimalist" design of Greenwheat is said to be inspired by Japanese Potters' use of brushwork which was reflected in studio pottery of the time - especially that of Bernard Leach.

Like all Denby it is incredibly tough and resilient, and the organic shapes and forms in this range and the Flair range are just wonderful. It's one of my favourite Denby shapes, apart from Chevron. The images in this and the next post are all of pieces I bought from a large (unfortunately incomplete) setting at auction last week.

Probably my favourite pieces. The eggcups are just soooo

lovely to hold and look at, and the design suits them perfectly.

Love the shape of the casseroles and ramekins in this and other ranges

from Denby at this time. So lovely to hold. I think the Green works so well

with the bright white of the underglaze too.

Sadly only 1 ramekin in the set I bought.

I love the way the bowls, large or small stack so well

The small bowl from above

Next Post - more photos of Greenwheat, and some more background information.