Designer Desire: Gerda Heuckeroth

Although much is known about the various West German pottery manufacturers such as Dümler & Breiden, Roth Keramik and Sheurich not many of the individual makers are familiar names. Gerda Heuckeroth was one of the few named designers.

She created wonderful designs for Ruscha (1959), Urania Ceramano (1962-64) and Carstens Tönnieshof (1964). I absolutely adore her square and rectangular plaques decorated with raised circles. I’ve included examples of them at the top & bottom of the montage. At least three different colourways were produced.

Gerda Heuckeroth eventually branched out on her own, setting up a studio in Berlin. Examples of her work are often available to buy at auction and on eBay and Etsy.

Image credits:

1st Dibs | Pamano

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.

In Orbit

WOW! How about this for an eye-popping bit of orange Op Art loveliness?

This cup & saucer is from the Orbit range produced by Burleigh in the 1960s. It’s superb and quite uncharacteristic of their usual output which is normally very traditional. Someone must have had a rush of blood to the head (or taken LSD) that week. It’s quite a rare pattern and doesn’t appear for sale often.

It’s a great display piece, and would also provide the perfect pick-me-up start to the day filled with strong coffee. We’ve got a few for sale and they’ll appear in our webshop soon.

Kirkham milk jugs

There’s a distinct risk of double entendre in this post, but the design of these jugs is so striking & photogenic that we had to give them a quick blog mention.

These milk jugs were produced by Kirkham Pottery and we think it’s called the Chef & Stripe range. They’re such classic 1950s – the graphic lettering, the stylised dancing chef & waiters – and the distinctive red, yellow & black colourway.

We’ve just put the larger one in our web shop. It has a bit of wear & crazing, but still displays wonderfully – and is completely usable for milk or cut flowers.

H is for Home Harbinger

Tag: vintage ceramics

Designer Desire: Gerda Heuckeroth

West German vase collection

In Orbit

Kirkham milk jugs