TALL RUSCHA KERAMIK ‘KAIRO’ EWER VASE Nr. 311/5

A large ewer-style vase in Cilli Wörsdörfer's highly successful Kairo décor, designed near the end of her tenure with RUSCHA KERAMIK in 1954. RUSCHA KERAMIK was launched in 1948 when Rudolf Schardt assumed the management of Klein & Schardt, his father Georg's ceramics factory in the town of Rheinbach, located southeast of Bonn in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. (RUSCHA is a syllabic contraction of his name.) The timing of the re-establishment ensured that the firm was in a good position to benefit from Germany's post-war boom. RUSCHA KERAMIK became a leading manufacturer during the "golden age" of Western German ceramics and is credited with some of the era's key developments. It produced some very successful and innovative forms and glazes, including the Vulcano décor (Otto Gerharz, 1951)—which heralded the move towards thick, dripping fat-lava glazes—and the iconic form Nr. 313 (Kurt Tschörner, 1954), probably the period's most famous shape. Hanns Welling, Adele Bolz,