I started this blog with a post on Atelier Van Eyk. The little ashtray I featured was my only item by potters and artists couple Anton and Dorothea van Eyk so far. Now I have a second one! In a matching decor also dating from 1950, I found a small dish (diameter of 14 cm/5.5″ and 6 cm/2.4″ high), that like the ashtray is made in Terra Sigillata. It is quite delicate, standing on a foot and decorated with a large amount of glaze dots.

The Terra Sigillata pieces by Atelier van Eyk were quite popular during the early 1950s. They were, among others, sold at the distinguished department store the “Bijenkorf” in Amsterdam. Anton and Dorothea were working from a studio in Amsterdam during that time, after having fled Elstra in East Germany where they were under suspicion of spying against the Russians. They had to leave the pottery factory in Elstra behind, where they had been working from 1940 onward. In Amsterdam however, they found it hard to maintain their pottery business, despite the success of the Terra Sigillata. They were only producing small series and one-offs of high quality and the competition within the art pottery business at that time was stiff. In 1955 they went back to Germany to continue their work from Nettetal, just across the border from the Netherlands, in the family business of Anton van Eyk. Here they produced works predominantly for their old East German clientèle. Atelier van Eyk went out of business in 1960, having made some excellent art pottery that, for obvious reasons, is very hard to find.

In 1976 Anton and Dorothea van Eyk moved to a huge stretch of land in Leuth (Germany) bordering on the Venloer Heide (moor). Here they spend the remainder of their life living in a caravan, working on their dream to create an art park and a home, with Dorothea designing the park that featured many large and small works of Anton van Eyk. Dorothea (born Fischer in 1912) died in 1995, Anton (born December 7, 1911) died January 19, 2004.

Besides Horst Makus, I used the article (in German) by Sigrid Blomen-Radermacher from 2003 for the background information in  this post. Also thank you Wilhelmina Spolders for kindly mentioning the birth and deceased dates of Anton van Eyk.

While the 1950s were, among other things, marked for a flight from the cities to the suburbs, cityscapes were a fairly popular theme in the decorative arts. You can find it on wallpaper, textiles, ceramics. In this post are two examples of a cityscape on a vase. Interestingly, they show a rather glamorous view of the city. A ‘Brigitte Bardot’-like woman leaning against a lamppost. ‘Brigitte Bardot strolling across the street in another outfit. A bit like in the movies actually. Why flee from such a lovely place? But of course these vases weren’t exactly trying to make a political statement. These were the shop-till-you-drop 1950s and what better place to put a vase with a romantic view of the city, than in a nicely decorated suburban home? In the suburbs they made the city look good.

The jug is made by Wächtersbach, form number 10249, measuring 21 cm/8.3″ in height. This shape can be found in many different decors, but this particular decor is called London. I wish I had more vases with elaborate city scenes like these, but I can’t say I have come across them a lot.

The vase below is made by Ruscha in the well known decor Paris (1956-58). This is a decor I have seen a number of times, often on wall plates or wall tiles, but also on different shapes of vases. I guess it was one of Ruscha’s more popular decors in the 1950s.

Just for the idea, I am adding two other designs from the 1950s with a cityscape pattern, one on wallpaper and one on furnishing fabric. Also to point out the marvelous collection of decorative arts in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London where these designs come from. You can search an extensive part of their collections through the V&A website. (They have a Schramberg vase too!)

The copyright for these images lies with the V&A (©Victoria and Albert Museum, London). Hover over the image for a description.

In the 1950s people were leaving the dark days of war and shortage behind. In the recovering cities, architects and city planners were building a new future for a baby booming population. This meant building for a better life, with better housing in better neighborhoods. In some places, more of the old city was being demolished to make way for the ‘new and improved’ than had been destroyed during the war. Such was the enthusiasm for the fresh start. Brighter days were lying ahead.

This also called for a fresh, new style indoors. Of course a lot of people would still go for a more traditional style in their homes, but if you were anywhere near hip, you would go for modern patterns for your walls, your furnishing and your vases. It was the only proper match with your ‘Good Design’ furniture. Modernist architects had banned ornament years before the war, deeming it irrational, immoral or even a crime according to Austrian architect Adolf Loos. So simplicity and functionality were to be the rule in modern architecture and design. But although three dimensional ornament would be absolute taboo, in a two dimensional plane designers could go absolutely wild! And so they did. Inspired by art, science or technology, mostly abstracted patterns were produced in every color you could think of. Color and pattern, rather than being foolish embellishments, were enhancing the functional shapes and spaces dictated by architecture and taking the chill out of the modern. With modern pattern design ornament came back with a vengeance.

(Hover over the images for a description)

Jasba is one of the companies I actively look for when searching for interesting vases to add to my collection. Founded in 1926 by Jakob Schwaderlapp (the same man who founded Ceramano in 1959) it produced a wide range of art pottery until the end of the 1970s.

Actually, I don’t realy like their 1950s pieces. Cilli Wörsdörfer was the key designer at Jasba in this period and she made several fairly nice designs in the modernist fashion, but I don’t tend to buy these pieces. They are just a bit too sedate to my taste, with matte glazes and a held back color pallet. The other 1950s pieces are either so kitsch they make me gasp or so boring they make me dose off. There I said it. Now on with the 1960s and 70s!

Interesting times started from the 1960s onward. In 1960 Jasba started the ‘Bunte Welt der Keramik’ (=Colorful World of Ceramics) line and shiny glazes with bright colors entered the stage. Christiane Reuter took over from Cilli Wörsdörfer around this time. I think most of the vases on the picture above are part of this line, except maybe for the brown one also showing on the left. These vases with their smooth drip glazes are still quite easy to find, so I guess these must have been commercially successful and sold by the thousands. They are fun, but this small collection is more than enough to get the picture.

Beside these pieces, Jasba managed to produce a number of interesting vases with just the right combination of color, molded pattern or shape, either with a straight forward shape and a smooth and simple decor or a more complex shape, maybe with a molded pattern and exactly the right color to match. Jasba did not do a lot of lava or other textured glazes. It was a company that was especially experimental with shapes and molded patterns. The variety is really amazing and with a good Jasba vase you really have a excellent piece of West German art pottery. Leave the so-so ones alone and of course they made far too many vases to get them all right, but even the weird ones I discussed in the post about the head vase have something about them. Jasba sometimes needs looking twice.

I am going to make it my business to acquire a really nice collection of 1960s and 70s Jasba vases. Here are a few examples to start with. More to come!

Below are two pieces I have shown in earlier posts.

Scheurich (founded in 1928) was one of the largest (maybe even the largest) West German pottery manufacturers. Their marketing strategy was to have a fair amount of shapes, cover these with an endless variety of glazes and sell them at a competitive price. There was a Scheurich vase to fit anybody’s taste. It was a good strategy, because they sold thousands and thousands of vases. As a matter of fact it kept them in business till this very day. Scheurich is still going strong.

You can still find a huge amount of older Scheurich vases on the secondhand market. The 1950s vases are OK, but don’t stand out and some have a bit of a grandma thing about them. The vases of the 1960s and 70s seem to be the most collectible.  Shapes are always quite OK, I think. They produced some more daring shapes, but on average Scheurich seemed to go for the simple, more traditional, but never old fashion shapes. The glazes are another thing. Scheurich made a truly monumental amount of glazes, trying all kinds of things, often involving some kind of lava or drip glaze. They made figurative decors and abstract decors, combining smooth glazes with textured glazes, shiny with matte glazes, using all kinds of colors with ‘loud’ combinations especially during the 1970s. In the 1960s Scheurich also made some iconic designs with a moulded pattern.

Some collectors focus on Scheurich, collecting shelfs full of one shape, but in a million different glazes. The sight of these kind of collections can be very impressive. I myself am not that kind of collector. I don’t have rows of one shape, but a lot of different shapes and no real plan or theme behind my Scheurich collection. Some vases I ended up with, some I really wanted to buy at the time, some I thought I should buy because they were Highly Collectible, some I still like, other not so much any more. But the ones I like most at this particular time are still out there.

Here are a few vases to give you an inch of an idea of what Scheurich is about. More Scheurich will follow.

I turned out collecting some Italian pottery next to my German collection, because when looking for German pottery I noticed these vases that looked German, but where somehow a bit odd. These turned out to be Italian. Italian and German vases from the 1950s can look alike, but there is something about the choice and combination of colors and the ‘looseness’ of the decor in Italian pieces that hints at a different origin. Also Italian pottery makers in the 1950s more often seemed to favor texture for their pieces and a figurative decor rather than abstract patterns. But these are hunches. I know way too little about Italian pottery to make any general statements.

I do find it harder to get hold of good Italian pieces. Either they are way too expensive because Fantoni made them (or someone close to that) or they are just not that good (not even good kitsch). But every once in a while I stumble upon something well worth my while, like the vases in this post.

These were made by the Fanciulacci Brothers (Montelupo, Italy) and they are simply super. The pieces are decorated with a combination of an unglazed chamotte clay and incised figurines with colored glazes. You can find this in several decors of which two varieties are shown here (front and back).

It has been a while since my last post. I have to admit that from early April till about October vases have to take a backseat to my other passion, which is gardening. Now that the garden is well on its way (just did my round of slugs), it is time for some more Fat Lava.

Many friends, growing up in the 1970s, vividly remember their parents’ lava vases and on top of that, they remember hating them. Seeing my collection always brings back some of those memories. They still tend to have trouble appreciating the 1970s vases, especially the ones that were very common back than. The vase on the left seems to have been quite ordinary, according to a friend.  I really love that little vase. The frothy black and white lava over a shiny orange glaze. Where do you still see orange like that! Well, nowhere of course, because it did involve a bit of highly unfriendly cadmium…..but still, how wonderful it looks. My friend on the other hand, had seen too many back in the days and she was still fed up with them to the brim. Unsurprisingly, she did not care much for the little orange lava vase.

My parents never had any hip vases, being more into antiques, so I have no bad memories to project on my precious vase collection. Still, I do like the feedback of people who have a vivid memory of West German vases. It can be quite an eyeopener and a shock too. How can you not like this vase?! You must be blind!

Also, it is funny how in studio pottery of the 1970s the thick lava glazes and the bright colors seem to have been virtually (or totally) absent. Judging from a good number of books on German studio pottery, commercial art pottery and studio pottery lived in two separate universes. While I am fairly capable of dating commercial art pottery by the decade, with studio pottery I would need a whole new frame of reference. At least the factory vases, like fashion and painting of the 1970s, are screaming 1970s to you. The top studio potters made a far more subtle and ageless product that could be quite wonderful, but how different. It is almost as if there is something like an introverted vase, a studio gem that takes some time getting to know and an -in your vase- extroverted factory vase you have a hard time to forget. Another eyeopener.

Finally, I ask myself: Where has the lava glaze gone? It must have been quite a revolution when this thick, textured glaze entered ceramics production. It was applied in many different ways, very beautifully in combination with smooth glazes. Fat lava vases were sold in large numbers, like ABBA records. Still, studio pottery of the time seemed to ignore the new glaze almost completely and I have not seen it applied much after the 1970s. Why not? Why not apply it again in modern ceramics. The fatter the better, that’s what I say!

If any young, aspiring ceramics designer out there wants to give the fat lava glaze another shot, go for it! And be sure to visit the More than Fat Lava exhibition for inspiration. It is opening in Amsterdam on June 18, 2011. Further information on the Pottery and Glass forum.

Hover over the pics for details on the vase.

A slightly wet gardening season is coming to an end and again it was not much of a tomato year I am afraid. Well, all I have to do now is watch the garden die gracefully in a blazing explosion of color (I love autumn) and move on to pottery season! Of course it is not like I totally forget about pots during spring and summertime. In fact, I managed to get hold of some really lovely pieces.

Here are three ashtrays, one in the shape of a pelikan and two shaped as fishes, from around 1956 by West German manufacturer Schmider. They are designs by Anneliese Beckh. She was Schmiders main designer between 1950 and 1983.  Of course, nowadays you can find ashtrays in the weirdest shapes possible, but mostly on the kitsch side of the spectrum. Beckhs ashtrays still have a hint of Art Deco, in the choice of colors, the matte glaze and the stylized animal shapes. Also, pots in the weirdest shapes possible were not all that common in the 1950s. So, an ashtray in the shape of an animal must still have been quite an exclusive accessory for a smoker.

Animal figurines, animals in painted decoration or molded additions to pots have been  a part of West European pottery since forever. But functional pots that are totally shaped like animals, like these ashtrays, seem to be more incidental. On average, European pots have a tendency to look like…. well, pots. We do have some well known human shaped pots like the Toby jug (18th century) or the face jugs by the Martin Brothers (late 19th century). Other examples appear through time ever so often. For the best examples of animal shaped vessels you would have to go back to medieval times or preferable look at non-European pottery. Pre-Columbian pottery for instance  is well known for its, so called, animal effigies. I added some examples from different ages below to give you an idea. Just to make the point that, while you can take it for granted that Anneliese Beckh designed these ashtrays in the shape of a pelikan or a fish,  in the grand scheme of things, I think that makes them rather special.

Hover over the pictures for information on the item.

The Filigran decor by Ruscha is probably one of the most desirable decors in West German pottery. From a picture it is not always easy to spot that this is actually an early (and very pretty) example of a commercially produced lava glaze. The amalgam of female figures, dear, fishes and loose geometric shapes are inscribed in the foamy off white glaze.  My own little, treasured copy of the Filigran decor featuring in this post, is only 12 cm/4.7 inch tall, but as you can see it will fit a whole lot of decor on it. Sadly, the Filigran decor is not very photogenic. Its beauty is best appreciated ‘life’, but I did my best with the pictures to give you an idea.

The decor was supposedly quite difficult to get right. I can only guess this had something to do with the unpredictability of the lava glaze during its firing, in combination with the inscribed decor. For this reason the Filigran decor was only produced for a short period of time. Being pretty, being rare and being Ruscha, collectors are willing to pay a fair amount of money for this decor nowadays. Only Roth’s Guitar vases can (still) top this. But for all its rarity, somehow you can find a Filigran (as well as a Guitar vase) on Ebay any day of the week. So, providing you have the means, you can easily get your own copy.

Adele Bolz was the designer of the Filigran decor. She is quite well know to collectors of West German pottery, although her career as a decor designer was relatively short. She had started in ceramics after a career as a ballet dancer was stopped short, because of a severe illness she caught at the end of WWII. Not much is know of her education as a designer. In 1955 she began at Arno Kiechle, designing several popular decors for wall plates and vases in a multicolored engobe technique. Ruscha managed to get her over to their team in 1959. Next to the legendary Filigran decor, she made numerous pretty decors for Ruscha in the elegant style that became her hallmark. She left  in 1963 for Ulmer Keramik, where she worked till her death in 1964 (aged 50).

My Atelier Van Eyk collection has been substantially enlarged with a recent find of a 27 piece service. For sure I now have the largest online collection by this potters duo. Hardly anything ever comes up on google, ebay or where ever, so I think this is not being presumptuous.

The service was beautifully made. Like the other two pieces I featured in earlier posts, these are terra sigillata dating from 1950. On the bottom of the coffee pot it is signed “Handmade Holland Van Eyk” (see picture at the bottom of this post). The service is quite modern in its appearance, functional and to the point. The decoration is of a nice simplicity and the whole set looks very unpretentious and effortless. The pieces feel very nice when you handle them. You can tell they were designed with their future user in mind, each piece fitting nicely into your hands and pleasant to the touch.

Despite of its modern simplicity, undoubtedly influenced by the Bauhaus design philosophy (planning to getting back to that in a later post), the service has a certain sweetness about it.  It has a perfectly smooth surface, decorated with all these little dots which are about the same size and equally spaced right around the pieces. Notice the single dot on the top end of the handle of the little sugar spoon (see picture at the top of the post). The shapes are super basic and nicely proportioned, emphasizing and echoing the simple circular shape throughout the whole set. Also there is this nice balance between the white glazed surfaces and the red terra sigillata. It all fits perfectly and so much care seems to have been put in the design and execution of this service.

I think this is the special thing about handmade pottery as apposed to industrial pottery. Anton and Dorothea van Eyk actually made these pieces themselves. In all these subtle ways you can catch a glimpse of their spirit through the work of their minds and hands. The service shows such an artistic sensitivity and beauty in its simplicity, I absolutely love it.

Of course I have been busy collecting the past two years, but I have not had much time to write about it. Hence no new posts appeared for quite a while. Also my little ‘photo studio’ setup had been dismantled and I had to find a new space in the house for taking pictures. This involved a grand vase clear up. Boxes full of pottery moved to the garage and I can not wait to unpack them in the future and look at them with fresh eyes, hoping to rediscover a lot of stuff, that did not deserve to disappear into a box in the first place. But still, for now the necessary space is available once again and  I guess the WGP collecting virus inevitably involves moving around vases.

In the mean time I also discovered Pinterest as a handy medium to keep me on track with my acquisition policy. Yes, I now have one – an acquisition policy I mean- and I am sort of sticking to it… A vase clogged house and an empty wallet makes focus and a bit of prudence important. This policy consists of a neat Pinterest board with all the vases I really wish for, locked from public view of course, so I can covet them in private. Every time I am starting to feel restless from all the lovely WGP vases on auction on Ebay, I take some time to meditate on my policy board and wait for my Zen to return.

Of course, so I found, it gets kind of complicated when several items listed in my acquisition policy are up for sale. Since they are in the policy, I should probably get them, right? With always lots of WGP on the market and not much natural prudence in my overall personality, this is of course what happened. What a boost to my collection though! Worth every penny and inch of space! Even got a Roth Guitar vase for quite a good price, considering the crazy prices. But it does leave me dead broke and until there is some cash flow to speak of, I am not allowed to add any more jewels to the family treasure chest, so judged my husband (bless him, he is very prudent). He is not even buying the “good investment” argument.

Here is where some of the money went…

Carstens Atelier vase by Gerda Heuckeroth, marked: 7090-50

Bay vase by Bodo Mans, runic pattern marked: 71-35

Dümler & Breiden Domino vase, marked: 615-30

Oberhessische Keramik Walther Becht vase, marked: WB 147-19

So, for the time being, instead of buying, I am doing something I like almost as much as collecting. That is, looking on the Internet at the collections of my fellow WGP collectors. There are some amazing collections out there and they are a source of inspiration for my acquisition policy. Also, I have made a public board on Pinterest, called Petra on Pottery like my blog, on which I have started downloading the pictures of my collection. Lots of new acquisitions on there too, among them the four in this post. So, hopefully -this way- returning the favor to all those collectors who, like me, are trying to deal with their ‘issues’ by dreaming up an acquisition policy while trying not to actually buy anything (just jet…). Have fun!

Link: http://www.pinterest.com/djacco/petra-on-pottery/

Lots of new items to see in the Picture Gallery! Here are a few to get the idea.

Photography and concept Heleen Haijtema. Dorothea Roth, vase, 1970-1975, Roth Eberhahn West Germany. Collection Petra Mesken

In September 2015 a new exhibition will open in the renowned Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. I am very exited about this, because 11 objects (vases, jugs and wall plates) from my collection will be in it! The exhibition will focus on ceramics mirroring the trends and social changes during the 20th century. Think of women’s liberation, the rise of the teenager, the rise of exotic travel destinations, space travel, individualism, consumerism, massproduction etc. About 400 ceramic objects will be showcased alongside other objects like furniture, paintings, film, photographs and an original 1960s caravan, offering a picture of the turbulent 20th century and its Zeitgeist. 

Obviously, I can’t wait for it to open. It should be a very interesting exhibition. And on the exhibition poster, none other than my beautiful Roth Ebernhahn guitar vase.

If you are in the neighbourhood, be sure to go see it!

The 20th century – mirroring time in ceramics can be seen in the Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands from September 5 -2015 until July 3 -2016.

More info via this link: The 20th century – mirroring time in ceramics

Left to right: plate by Anna-Lisa Thomson for Upsala Ekeby Havsflora series 1951-60 (Sweden), plate signed Venezia Italy, plate signed 364 Italy, vase by Steuler marked 315/35.

Left to right: vase by Oberhessische Keramik marked U4/24, vase by Oberhessische Keramik marked U3/20, vase by Schlossberg marked 509/25, three vases by Spara by Turkish designer Halidun Kutlu 1970s.

Left to right: vase by Dumler & Breiden (?), three vases by Bay with peacock decor

Figurines by Schmider, design by Anneliese Beckh (1956)

With the acquisition of the elephant dish (below right), my Schmider figurines collection must now be pretty much complete. That is to say, I am not aware of any other type of figurine I could add in this particular series. If anyone else has seen a variation, of course I am dying to hear about it!

Top left to right: Large vase by Dümler & Breiden form number 493-35, small vase by Oberhessische keramik form number WB 145/15, large vase by Scheurich 420-38, small vase by Schlossberg decor Cuba.

Bottom left to right: Two wall plates from the Teenager series by Ü-Keramik design: Ursula Schönhaber, 1960. Marked: 568-22, large vase in green by Bay design: Bodo Mans form number 257-35.

The ceramic chess game in this post was made by a young Dutch man called Nico Bongers in the mid 60s, while he worked as an intern at Bay Keramik in Ransbach-Baumbach. I acquired it in 2014 from his widow Marianne, who had put it up for sale. The chess set had been sitting in a box on the attic for quite a number of years. There was no room to put it on display and Marianne Bongers thought it was a shame, so she decided to make somebody else happy with it. That happy someone turned out to be me.

What caught my eye, besides it being a ceramic chess game, was the glaze. The red one looked a bit like the volcano glazes used by Ruscha and the turquoise like the ones used by Bay on the Rimini Blu-like pieces in the 1960s. It definitely had a mid-century German look to it. So when I went to pick it up, there turned out to be this interesting story of an internship at Bay Keramik behind the set.

I have a complete set, plus 12 extra pieces. Nico designed and made six molds for casting the whole set. The individual shapes are shown above. The pieces are between 16 and 20 cm high, with simple nicely proportioned shapes. Twenty two pieces were cast for each colour. The excess of 6 pieces per colour all show some kind of imperfection. This really shows the process of making ceramics, with patches where the glaze turned out too thin, with shrinkage cracks in the piece, with runny glaze at the base, with chips….oops.

Interestingly, Nico Bongers worked at Bay as an intern around the same time as Bodo Mans did. I wonder if this lead designer was perhaps also the supervisor of Nico’s internship. It is not unlikely, is it?

The matte blue glaze of the chess pieces was also used in the production of other Bay pieces. The red glaze on the other hand, I have never seen on any Bay piece. Was it an experiment? In the chess set, you can see the red volcano glaze is running over quite a shiny brown glaze. At the base of the red pieces, you can also see what can go wrong, when the volcano glaze starts to ripple and it turns out to be a less then pretty finish. Maybe it was not such a succes and hence never taken into production? For comparison, to the left you can see a Ruscha piece with the volcano glaze running over a matte greenish glaze, where it may have behaved in a more controlled way. While in the Bay pieces the red volcano glaze tends to slide off sometimes. Or maybe there was enough volcano glaze to go around anyway? No need to flood the market with more. Who knows.

The chess set was also not taken into production. Probably, it was a bit too large for most households to own. It is not a chess set you can throw into the cupboard when you are done playing, like you would with the little wooden or plastic pieces. Where to put it? Aha, in a box in the attic! It would likely not have been a commercial succes.

So, this set is a one-off, I guess. Nico Bongers did not continue in a career as a potter or an industrial designer of such. He went on to own his own ceramics shop in the east of the Netherlands, which I am sure he did a fine job at. But judging from his work as an intern, I think he would have made an excellent designer too. I am glad to share in this post the evidence of his talent.

I got a reaction from Ralf J. Schumann on my previous post about the chess set made at the Bay Keramik factory. Ralf contacted a former manager from Bay and this manager still remembered Nico Bongers, the intern who made the chess set. This is what he said about it:

Well, this sheds some more light on the story behind the chess set. Thank you, Ralf!

*Ralf J. Schumann is a collector and researcher of West German ceramics form the 1950s. You can find his website through this link:

Ralf J. Schumann 1950s Keramiksammlung

Handles have always been used in creative ways in the design of pots. Especially in flower vases, where the practical need of the handle is limited, there has always been ample room to design the handles in expressive rather than practical ways, sometimes almost beyond recognition. But also in teapots and pitchers you can find stunningly creative designs, where there is even some practicality left. Below I gathered a few examples from ceramic history to illustrate this.

Similarly, with the creative boom in mid century German decorative pottery you can find all kinds of handles, from huge sweeping ones on floor vases to knob like handles on smaller vases and everything in between. Mostly, you will see the handles attached to the body as a separate part of the pot, which -in a way- is still rather conventional. But a paradigm shift had been set in earlier, that would also effect the handling of the handles. Below, first some examples from my own collection where body and handles are still clearly separate entities in the overall design. However, the relationship between body and handles was heading for new interpretations.

First some historic background (for those interested) in the tiniest nutshell

Already during the 19th and early 20th century, the separating lines between pottery, sculpture, architecture and painting had started to become blurred. Avant garde artists, designers and architects were striving to cross the boundaries between their respective fields, to create the Romantic ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk, a perfect unity between all of the arts (fine, decorative and applied). Potters and ceramic designers who looked beyond their own field, were taking home new ideas to incorporate into their own work. From this point on and into the 20th century, next to traditional pottery, you can see pots appearing that are more painterly, more sculptural and more architectural then before. Potters were trying new things, other artists were discovering ceramics as a medium, architects incorporated work from ceramic artists and sculptors into their buildings, architects were doing ceramic designs, cross fertilizing the field. To illustrate some of this:

Painters and sculptors into ceramics:

Architects and designers into ceramics

Potters taking shapes and glazes to the next level:

So, there you go with a wellspring of creative and conceptual innovation taking place in the arts from the late 19th into the 20th century, emanating from a search for new ways within the art fields and from the cross-overs between the fields of pottery, sculpture, painting, design and architecture. Pottery traditions and techniques did not go overboard of course, but the approach of the painter, the sculptor and the architect/designer were added, opening up new ways of seeing things. Looking at post-war German art pottery, you can see pot makers mixing and matching (and sometimes mismatching) all of these influences into their designs. From my own collection:

The painterly: treating the body of the vase as a canvas for the expressive use of lines and colors:

The sculptural: with an original interplay of expressive shapes, textures, surface designs and glazes :

The (Modernist) architectural: integrating clear three dimensional shapes into an elegantly balanced whole:

Now: back to handles 

But why did I start with handles? Some pots have them. Some pots do not. What is the big deal? Well, for all the interesting, new approaches to shapes, surface design, decors and glazes, I think the integration of the handles into the body of the vase is one of the most interesting conceptual innovations. Already in the vase design by architect Peter Behrens in the gallery above, you can see how the handles are being treated as part of the body of the vase, rather than just being attached to it. There are several examples in my collection where this is also the case.

However, the handles in the gallery above are still fairly recognizable as such. But what about the designs below? The handles have totally merged with the body. You might even say that in the Rosenthal designs by Beate Kuhn (left) the body of the so-called “Kummet” (meaning horse collar; thank you Carry for the right translation, see comments) vase has become one big handle.

Surely, it must have been the approach of the Modernist architect/designer influencing this handling of the handles in some of the most Modern pottery designs. “Things merely attached” (ornament) just won’t do in the Modernist mind. Everything  has to be integrated into an aesthetic and rational whole, bringing down complexity to its essentials and leaving out all the fuss. What this meant for the handle, is beautifully demonstrated in the Rosenthal designs by Beate Kuhn (not part of my collection unfortunately).

So, what about the Dümler & Breiden vase on the right? Is that the logical conclusion of the handles merging with the body of the vase? I am guessing that might even be a bit of Post-Modernism avant la lettre. It is a bit tongue in cheek almost. Critiquing this Modernist trend with a sense of humour and putting the handle smack in the middle. From a handle to a hole.

Since I do not find their pieces very often and having a soft spot for Atelier Van Eyk, I feel every piece by Anton and Dorothea Van Eyk deserves a post. So here it is, my latest, a globular vase looking somewhat like…… a pumpkin.

It is a peculiar piece, I think, compared to the 1950’s work that is probably more known (see below), so I am not very confident on putting a date on it. Of course, roughly speaking it would be between 1940-1960, unless it is a fake. The hand thrown body of the vase is a traditional globular shape and for a Van Eyk piece it seems quite large, being 16 cm/ 6.3″. It has a smooth white clay body with a thick orange glaze. The glaze decoration has the same elegant simplicity and shows similar care in spacing en execution as the other pieces I have from the 50’s. The thickness of the glaze and the colour combination I have not seen before, though.

I have this little black vase with a white twirl in the dents on all four sides, that seems more typical of their 1950’s work. It is around 7 cm/2.8″ in height and shown below left, next to a portrait of Anton and Dorothea Van Eyk.

For comparison and to broaden the scope beyond my own collection, I also gathered some images below of the more known work by Atelier Van Eyk from the 1950’s. I got part of these from the website of the current Atelier Van Eyk which operates, in line with the wishes of Anton van Eyk, as a place for art exhibitions, workshops, music recitals and theater. Link: Atelier Van Eyk . The images with the striped teapot and spotted vases….I can not remember the source of…. (archive of Wilhelmina Spolders?). Should you know the source, please let me know, so I can give due credit.