The Bunzlau pottery of Germany and Silesia

Magazine Antiques, July, 1997 by Charles R. Mack, Ilona S. Mack

When connoisseurs of traditional American ceramics think of German pottery what assuredly comes to mind are the cobalt-embellished, salt-glazed stoneware crocks and pitchers from the Westerwald and Palatinate regions or the slip-trailed and sgraffito-decorated plates made in Holstein and Bavaria.(1) In those wares can be found a close kinship with the pottery styles of Pennsylvania, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and the Moravian settlements of North Carolina. This picture of the Germanic tradition is incomplete, however, for it ignores the Bunzlau ware of the former East Germany and Silesia (now part of Poland).(2)

This ware takes its name from a major center of its production, the town of Bunzlau in Lower Silesia. (When that German province was annexed to Poland at the end of World War II the town's name was changed to Boleslawiec.) The Bunzlau style is typical, with some local variations, of the nearby pottery centers of Naumburg am Queis, Ullersdorf, and Tillendorf, as well as potteries in the adjoining Lusatian, Saxon, and Brandenburg districts of present-day Germany [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED].(3)

Bunzlau ware is markedly different from the salt-glazed and sgraffito-decorated wares usually associated with Germany. Its tradition dates to the eighteenth century, when its manufacture was encouraged by the Prussian government. The Silesian potteries of that period turned out elegant, high-fired earthenware coffeepots, pitchers, and beer tankards covered in a rich, chocolate brown slip that was often decorated with molded reliefs in white [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE III OMITTED]. Prussian eagles, coats of arms, flowers, angels, stags, and neoclassical motifs were common subjects for reliefs. The effect is reminiscent of the jasper ware being produced at the same time by Josiah Wedgwood I (1730-1795) in England.

Under the auspices of the Prussian government brown Bunzlau ware with white appliques flourished into the nineteenth century and enjoyed wide regional distribution. The shapes at least can be found in the work of Carl Ludwig Heinrich Mehwaldt, who emigrated from Brussow, northeast of Berlin, in 1851 to settle in Bergholtz near Buffalo, New York.(4) There he produced lidded coffeepots [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED] and other simple forms.

Early Bunzlau wares are seldom found on the market today. Most of the fancy wares have entered public and private collections and most of the utilitarian storage and cooking vessels that were the stock in trade for the more than fifty potteries in and around Bunzlau in the first haft of the nineteenth century have either disappeared or am unrecognized today. Although certainly much later, the pitcher, sieve, and coffeepot shown in Plate II are nonetheless typical of utilitarian Bunzlau pottery.

By the end of the nineteenth century the number of Bunzlau potteries had more than doubled, but the competition of mass-produced ceramics and glasswares threatened their survival. Consequently, in 1898 the German government established the Keramische Fachschule Bunzlau (Bunzlau Ceramic Technical School) with the mandate of ensuring the viability of the local pottery industry. The director, Wilhelm Pukall (1860-1936), and his staff instructed the local potteries in new production procedures, marketing techniques, and styles to appeal to a new generation of customers. While continuing to produce utilitarian, brown-slip storage vessels for farm and kitchen use, the potters inaugurated a line of small decorative objects for an increasingly urban and urbane clientele.(5) Combining traditional folk aesthetics with those of the arts and crafts movement, this is the variety of pottery with which the Bunzlau style is most frequently associated. Small bowls, plates, entire dinner services, milk pitchers, coffeepots, and flower vases became the new staples of the potteries. The brown slip was replaced by brightly colored, sponged decorations in blue, green, and orange, featuring a range of elaborate motifs of which the most striking was the Pfauenauge (peacock's eye) design. Clearly of Oriental inspiration, it is closely associated with the decorative arts in the art nouveau style and its Germanic equivalent, Jugendstil. The motif first appeared in Bunzlau pottery around 1910, perhaps initiated by the Ceramic Technical School. The bowl and pitcher in Plates IV and V, from unidentified Silesian potteries, are good examples of the style, as is the breadbasket in Plate XII, which features large and small peacocks' eyes on a sponged background. The examples of utilitarian objects may be compared to the vase with softly rendered peacocks' eyes shown in Plate IX, which may well have been produced in the Ceramic Technical School itself.(6)

By the second decade of this century the continued success of the German and Silesian potteries was assured and many of them had evolved into sophisticated manufactories producing wares of the type shown in Plate VIII. Many of the potters had begun marking their wares ([ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED], left) and were marketing them widely. Both the traditional utilitarian wares and the decorative variety could be found throughout Germany and were exported extensively as far away as the United States and South Africa. When the old shapes are adorned with sponged Jugendstil motifs, the blend of folk art and high art is both curious and charming [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE VI OMITTED].