Blomus tea set

This stainless steel tea set caught our eye at a local flea market last week. What a fabulous modernist shape!

The lady selling it thought it dated from the 1960’s. We could go along with that assumption in terms of design – you could just see it in the departure lounge of 2001: A Space Oddysey!

However, this date was far from certain and would require some checking. It was clearly marked to the base, so detective work was quite straightforward.

As it turned out, it dates from the noughties – and is the limited edition ‘Asia’ tea set produced by Blomus of Germany.

The design and quality is superb – and we love little details like the integral strainer. The set comprises teapot, lidded milk and sugar bowls – and under tray. Form meets function perfectly.

It’s quite quickly become sought after and collectable. It’s just gone into a mid-century modern corner of a new retail space that we’ve just acquired… more details to follow on that! It’s priced at £125 the set.

More Menus!

Our last vintage menus post proved popular – and most of the examples that we featured in it prior to listing in the web shop have now sold.

We thought we’d share some more of our collection over the coming weeks…

…starting with this collection of cruise ship menus dating from the late 1960s.

They were produced for the German company, Norddeutscher Lloyd Bremen.

We like the combination of stark pen & ink drawing with bold, partial colouring. They’re very distinctive – the artist’s signature looks like Geißler, but we can’t seem to find any mention of him anywhere on the internet. Can anyone out there shed some light?

This particular set would look fabulous with simple black frames against a large expanse of white wall. The vibrant colours would really leap out and draw you in to take a closer look.

West German vase collection

We’ve been Fat Lava fans for a long time. It was over 7 years ago that we first blogged about our West German vase collection. All the fabulous shapes and glazes make them a wonderful thing to collect. There’s much more information coming to light about the various factories and designers that produced them which adds further interest and insight. Books, websites and magazine articles dedicated to the subject have appeared over recent years.

We’ve seen quite an addition in our own numbers recently. As mentioned in Tuesday’s post, we bought 21 vases at auction last week.

There are some real beauties, including pieces by Dumler & Breiden, Carstens and Sheurich.

Some work well in small groupings…

…others are very impressive stand-alone pieces, such as this large, sculptural Carstens Luxus range ‘Beehive’ vase designed by Dieter Peter.

As well as adding a couple to our own West German vase collection, we’ve put about fifteen of them into our antiques centre space; they work very well in a large display. We’ll also add some to the website in the coming week – here’s what we currently have for sale in our online shop.

Creative Collections: Altenstadt bottles

For this Creative Collections post we have this lovely group of bottle decanters.

They’re all marked Altenstadt, Western Germany to the base – so we know where they originate from, but we have to admit to ignorance when it comes to a designer or manufacturer. Anyone out there know?

Each bottle represents either a specific character, such as a pirate or sailor…

…or a group scene like the bar room or birds in a cage.

They’re very charming and look equally good as a group or stand alone piece. They’re very good quality ceramic and the graphics are fabulous, full of quirky details.

We usually put our collections together over a long period of time, picking pieces up singly. Not in this case however. The bottles were someone else’s hard work – hello Emma (of Wooden Donkey fame) if you’re reading this!! We bought her remaining stock when she retired from the vintage retail game. We were supposed to be selling them of course, but as you can see we’ve not managed to part with them as yet!

H is for Home Harbinger

Tag: Germany

Blomus tea set

More Menus!

West German vase collection

Creative Collections: Altenstadt bottles