SILBERDISTEL “FLOWER POWER” JUG VASE

Handmade in the 1960s by the small Silberdistel ceramics company, this pitcher or jug style vase features an applied 90 degree handle and spout on a long cylindrical neck above a bulbous round body hand painted with a red and baby blue floral decor on a dark blue ground. SILBERDISTEL KERAMIK (1947-Present), which takes its name from a kind of silver thistle that grows in the Alps in Austria and Switzerland, was founded in 1947 by Johann and Grete Breu in Gevelsberg, and managed early on by the ceramicist Walter A. Heufelder (b.1926).  The company got a major boost in 1952 when they participated in a joint exhibition at the Hannover Fair with the Worms Terra Sigillata Manufaktur, and while the factory remained a small studio pottery business, even during the rapid expansion of the ceramics industry in Germany during the 1950s and 1960s, they had to hire a complement of 23 employees to handle the business by the mid 1950s.  Silberdistel made a very high quality artisanal line of vases, b