Three Scheurich retro winter warmers

 

Something to add a bit of warmth to a winter day.

There are Dancing flames, fire-red colours and bubbling lava flows on these vintage West German vases.

I have an idea they are all by Scheurich and they probably date from the 1960s or 1970s. Grouped together, they certainly help to warm up a retro-styled interior.

There seems a lot more information available on West German pottery these days - and some very keen collectors. There are some amazing images and lots of good info on one of my favourite blogs, here: Blurat West German pottery

Sweet simplicity in stainless steel.

 

Who was it that said 'Less is more'?

Do you find that sometimes, when you see and an object, it looks and feels just right? It may not be an expensive object – like this humble sugar shaker – but somehow you get the feeling that the designer got it spot on.

I do. And I did, when I found this stainless steel kitchen accessory in a local charity shop recently.

I suspect that simplicity is the key. And I imagine that it's not easy for a designer to get that just right: keeping to a perfectly symmetrical form, resisting the urge to add any decoration and carefully considering every small detail right down to the arrangement of the holes in the top. Simple but not easy.

As for the sugar shaker itself, all I know of it is that it was made in Britain by Chichester, I would guess around the late 1960s or early 1970s.

Sweet.

Troika. A work of art whichever way you look at it.

Vase, sculpture, art? To me, this tall Troika vase qualifies as all three.

And the nice thing about having a vase that's square like this one, is that – depending which face you choose to display – it's a bit like having four different vases in one.

This carved and wonderfully textured vase in warm earthy colours is by Troika Pottery. The design is by Tina Doubleday who was at Troika between 1977 and 1979.

There's a lot more information on Troika pottery, including a useful list of designers marks, here: Troika Pottery