C20Ceramics

Jul 11

Braemore Carstens

Some die hard fans of West German Pottery will know that the Carstens brand was produced under license in Australia during mid 1960s by Braemore Australia…but it is not a very well known fact…and it can lead to confusion when identifying West German pottery sometimes.

Judith from the Australian Pottery 1960s to date blog has a comprehensive post full of useful information about the history of Australian pottery Braemore and its relationship with Carstens, and also with the company Haeger.

Braemore Pottery was opened in 1939 and ran until around 1985 producing pottery under its own label plus the Braemore Carstens label from the 1960s.

One of the most coveted Carstens designs was – Ankara. Designed in 1964 by Helmut Scholtis it was produced in both Germany and Australia – and is now a very sought after Carsten’s design.

German versions of the Ankara design were made using a reddish-brown clay, but a white clay was used in Australian production.

Braemore Carstens pieces are marked with an embossed B-C and the model number as in the image below.

Braemore Carstens Ankara Design

Braemore Carstens Ankara Stamp

Below are some other fantastic designs I have had from the Braemore-Carstens label: Read more

Jul 9

Bing & Grondahl “Tivoli”

This very smart design from Bing & Grondahl is called “Tivoli”, and was designed by Martin Hunt c1970s.

Martin Hunt, Co-Designer of the award winning Hornsea Lancaster Vitramic and a huge number of other Hornsea designs – also designed several dinnerware series for Bing and Grondahl and Rosenthal. The Bing & Grondahl designs include Tivoli, Korinth and Cumulus (decoration by Carl Harry-Stalhane) .

The same forms Martin Hunt designed for Tivoli were also used on the series Delphi, Olympia, Sahara, Troja, Corinth, Marrakech and Casablanca. All of these designs are now quite hard to get hold of.

If you want to see more Martin Hunt designs go to the V&A collections online here for Martin. They have a very large collection of his designs from the 1970s until current day, including some of the B&G designs mentioned above.

Jul 8

L. Hjorth Denmark Urn

L Hjorth Denmark Urn

This beautiful handmade stoneware vase is from L. Hjorth, Bornholm, Denmark. I love the colour and texture of the glaze, in addition to the form and level of craftsmanship the piece displays.

The glaze indicates a studio piece from the 1960’s or 1970’s with its blue mottled appearance. It was a glaze which was very popular in this era with many manufacturers and potters.

The urn is stamped only with the L.Hjorth stamp, and does not have the reindeer mark – the lack of which would normally indicate that this was produced pre 1927 – but there are exceptions to this rule, and you can find pieces made in the 1960s and 1970s which have no reindeer stamp.

Looking through the old Hjorth catalogues online however, I think I have found the series this piece was copied from in the 1916 catalogue, the title of which translates as “copies of Bornholm excavations”. Copies from which era I’m not sure, as Bornholm has been occupied since pre-historic times by several races/tribes of peoples. The form of this piece has a very Roman Empire look to it though.

Apparently the original pieces made in 1916 as copies of the Bornholm excavations had little in the way of glaze or decoration either – and were a reddish brown, or natural clay colour.

Whatever the story – A fascinating link to history through a beautifully made piece of early 20th Century pottery. The beauty of Danish pottery never ceases to astound me.