The wild 70s

In the 1970s, Italian designers were highly regarded in Germany and were considered to be particularly innovative worldwide. For example, Cari Zalloni or Ettore Sottsass worked for German ceramics companies. Swedish designers such as Stig Lindberg and Hertha Bengtson were also in demand in Germany. For the bourgeois customers, who could not keep up with the avant-garde design, industrial production offered more dignified variants. Who doesn't remember the rustic earthy hues, both ceramics and entire interiors?

Thus, the choice of colours went in two different directions: in addition to ceramics in beige and brown tones, they relied on bright, strong, even "psychedelic" colours. A typical phenomenon of the time is, for example, the orange-red selenier glaze. In the 1970s, the overpointed glaze creations in particular had a great artistic significance.

For studio ceramicists, a large playing field opened up for experiments of all kinds: they turned away from traditional craft norms and freed themselves from the dogma of the usefulness of the glazes. Among ceramicists, a real race for new glaze creations began.

The beauty was seen in the imperfect: irregular running glaze, even small glaze defects and boiled bubbles were not disregarded, but affirmed as the realization of a spontaneous artistic idea. These included glaze species such as "fat lava" or crater glazes.

The ceramic industry was inspired by the complex glaze processes of the studio ceramics and tried to produce them serially, which presented itself as a technical challenge. Finally, special luxury lines were developed, which sold very well despite the expensive production and the associated high prices.