CARSTENS TÖNNIESHOF ‘MOONCRATER’ FLOOR VASE 7951/42

A CARSTENS TÖNNIESHOF, Mooncrater relief vase from its high-end Luxus range of ceramics, designed for the company by Dieter Peter and Rudolph Christmann in the late 1960s. The deeply cratered décor was no doubt a response to the Apollo 11 moon landing of 1969, which inspired several décors in the Luxus series. This large, double-handled floor vase is covered in a glossy, chocolatey-brown metallic glaze, topped in front with an equally glossy, bright red. A striking 16 ½". In perfect, original condition. CARSTENS-TÖNNIESHOF was founded in 1946 by Ernst Carstens and his son Christian. The family (which included Christian's namesake uncle, sometimes mistakenly listed as a Tönnieshof cofounder) had a generations-long history of manufacturing porcelain and other ceramics throughout Germany. However, all of its businesses had collapsed by the end of WWII. Most of the factories that had survived were expropriated by the GDR—having wound up on the communist side of the line when the country w