A big and beautiful SILBERDISTEL floor vase 12/40 dressed in their highly coveted, textural glaze, here in shades of orange and brown with hints of yellow and green.  Fully marked on the base.

SILBERDISTEL (named for a kind of silver thistle native to the Austrian and Swiss Alps) was founded in 1947 by Johann and Grete Breu in Gevelsberg in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.  The company was managed early on by the ceramicist Walter A. Heufelder (b.1926).  Its fortunes got a major boost in 1952 following its participation in a joint exhibition with the Worms Terra Sigillata Manufaktur at the Hanover fair.  By the mid '50s, the company had to hire a complement of 23 employees to meet demand.  Nevertheless the factory would always remain a small studio pottery, despite the remarkable expansion of the German ceramics industry over the next two decades.

SILBERDISTEL made a very high quality, artisanal line of vases, bowls, jugs, and other ceramic objects.  It became well known for the craftsman-like manner of its production as well as the extraordinary range of complex glazes that were employed.  Often several glazes of different colors were fused one on top of the other.  Technicians spent months perfecting such glazes in time-consuming experiments before they were deemed reliable.  Many early items were offered under the name 'Craquelé-Fayencen' which, as the name suggests, described a fine, crackle glaze that was produced through the mid '60s.  Beginning in 1957, the company also put out pieces with a number of hand-painted décors.  However SILBERDISTEL is surely best known for its stunning range of volcanic and thick lava glazes produced in the 1960s.  The brand was taken over by Carstens in 2005 and has since been manufactured in Rheinsberg, a small town 75 km north of Berlin.

SILBERDISTEL used a light white clay exclusively.  Unlike most other companies, its pieces are almost never marked with the typical 'W Germany' or 'Germany'—very rarely a stamp reading 'WEST GERMANY' was used.  Markings usually comprise simply the form number and size scratched by hand into the clay, with occasionally an impressed 'Silberdistel' stamp added to the base.  Frequently items were produced with small green felt circles attached to the base, many examples of which are still seen today.