CARSTENS TÖNNIESHOF ‘PEKING’ VASE Nr. 0076/20 BY GERDA HEUCKEROTH

A gorgeous example of Gerda Heuckeroth's 'Peking' decor for Carstens Tönnieshof in a rare colorway.  Form number 0076/20 has been glazed in a very glossy and beautiful cadmium yellow topped with a sparkling metallic brown that flows down from the double-ringed neck of the vase.  Very reminiscent of a series designed by Renee Neue for Hutschenreuther. CARSTENS TÖNNIESHOF was founded in 1946 by Ernst Carstens and his son Christian. Their family had a long prior history of manufacturing ceramics and porcelain in Germany, but all of its businesses had collapsed by the end of WWII. Most of the CARSTENS factories wound up on East German soil when the country was divided and so were expropriated by the DDR. Father and son built the new Tönnieshof factory on a farm of that name in Fredelsloh in Lower Saxony, just west of the border with East Germany.  Very little is known about Carstens Tönnieshof's earliest production of table ceramics which began in 1947; the first known decorative pieces da