Here’s another monumental piece (standing 15″ tall), also made by Gerda Heuckeroth for Carstens of Tönnieshof. It is one piece of an impressive New York collection, just acquired by LEO Design.
Carstens was founded in 1945, and by the early 1960’s it was a very large, very high-volume manufacturer (the second biggest in West Germany after Scheurich)—making upwards of 10,000 pieces a day. Over the years, the Carstens brothers had proven themselves very savvy about steering their company—and realized that having an association with a respected ceramic artiste would add aesthetic credibility to such a large manufacturer. Gerda Heuckeroth was engaged in 1962 to develop and produce an “Atelier” line of studio pottery for Carstens. She worked from a Hamburg studio and, until 1964, designed special pieces for the Atelier line and oversaw their production.