Thrifting

Good Memories from the Divided Mid-Century Germany

Mid-Century Home February 21, 2011

Few days ago I was in the new Amsterdam public library -an amazing building- looking for a book that they didn’t have; instead I found something else.

At the fourth floor, I have been suddenly surrounded by a multitude of Mid-Century West-German vases!

I spent a bit before understanding that it actually was an exhibition: ‘VazenMania!’.

The exhibition putted the spot on the West-German manufacturers from the 1945 to the 1990.

I don’t know you, but one of my biggest addiction about the Mid-Century are vases…and lamps. So you can probably imagine how thrilled, and lucky, I felt to be in the middle of this vases paradise 😉

A particular type of West German vases are also called by the collectors, ‘Fat Lava‘ because of their kind of lava pattern; you can see some of them in the photo gallery.

What I really like about West German vases are the colorful decorations they have, sometimes glossy, and the original design. They almost never have a boring common vase shape.

The exhibition showed a large variety of vases…some decorations are peculiar of specific manufacturer as I also wrote in my previous post How to Recognize the Original Mid-Century German Potteries: Scheurich about one of the most famous company: Scheurich.

For the real lovers of the West German potteries, the book ‘Fat Lava: West German Ceramics of the 1960s and 70s‘ describes the era and works of the biggest West German manufactures like Bay, Dümler & Breiden, ES Keramik, Jasba, Jopeko, Otto Keramik, Roth, Ruscha and Scheurich.

Is quite rare to find a book on this specific topic; a must have for the Fat Lava lovers.

If you want more info about the West German potteries check also West German Ceramics « The H is for Home Harbinger.

Unfortunately the exhibition ended but if you want to know more about the Mid-Century German vases and Mid-Century in general, keep following Mid Century Home for free trough the RSS by the Mail List or Twitter!

I am planning to come back again on this interesting topic

Specially following Mid Century Home by Mail, you will only receive Mid-Century Modern inspiration for your home!!

Ciao!

Emma February 25, 2011

I’ve literally just returned from a trip to Germany and didn’t know this was on! We could have stopped in on our way over! It looks amazing, wish I could have seen it. Emma

Marco February 25, 2011

Hi Emma!
It’s a pity you missed it, indeed 🙁 I think would had love it.

Did you recognize any of your vases in my pics? 😉

Emma February 27, 2011

Hi, yes quite a few that we have – a few in different glazes and forms in various combinations as well! How did they organise the displays? They seem to be by colour in your photos. Did they give much information on makers and/or designers? I’d love to do something like this in Britain. Emma

Marco February 27, 2011

Well…I think they mainly organize them by age and manufacturer…there also were big displays, you can see them in the pics, where they were displayed by colors.

There was also a catalogue that looked very interesting, but was in Dutch 🙁

I emailed the guy who organized the exhibition to have a translated copy of it but he didn’t. However, he gave me the blog he created for the event: http://www.westgermanyvazen.blogspot.com.

It is in Dutch but Google translate does its job very well 😉

It’s full of interesting and useful information about West German vases!!! 😀 A must have it in your blogroll.

See you around soon.

René van Dam March 1, 2011

Thanks for this post and the pictures you took 🙂

If I know of new exhibitions (by others or myself) I will post it at my weblog 😉

Kindest regards,

René

Marco March 1, 2011

Hi Rene’!
Thanks to you to had organize this amazing and useful exhibition!
Your blog is really nice as well, full of interesting news about German potteries….go ahead and, if you have too many of them and want to ged rid of a couple, let me know 😉

I hope to see you around here soon again.