1970s VEB HALDENSLEBEN VASE 3102C Nr. (18 cm)

An ovoid VEB HALDENSLEBEN vase (no. 3102C) with a matte, speckled-orange underglaze beneath a satin-gloss, beige-splattered bronze-colored top glaze—forming an extraordinary wax resist band around the center of the vessel.  The interior is white.

VEB HALDENSLEBEN was a state-owned, East German ceramics factory in the Saxony town of Haldensleben.  It was organized in 1945 with the nationalization of the Carstens Uffrecht plant that followed the division of Germany at the end of WWII.  (Carstens Uffrecht had had its own origins with the Carstens family's purchase in 1924 of the porcelain workshop set up by Jacob Uffrecht in Haldensleben in 1845.)  Carstens lost practically all of its holdings with the establishment of the DDR; the family fled west where brothers Christian and Ernst founded Carstens Tönnieshof on a farm of that name near the village of Freden, not far from the East German border.  (VEB is an abbreviation of the phrase Volkseigener Betrieb, or People's Factory.)

HALDENSLEBEN focused primarily on the manufacture of vases.  Its output tended to be of superior quality.  Many of the décors show similarities to those of the company VEB Strehla Keramik.  Metallic glazes are often included; the colors are generally more subdued than those of contemporaneous West German products.  When Germany was reunited in 1990, the factory was returned to Carstens family hands and renamed Carstens Keramik Rheinsberg.

HALDENSLEBEN used both white and brown clays, depending on availability.  Often, though not always, the bottoms of vases were marked with the company's logo—a shallow dish superimposed over the letter 'H' inside a circle.  The form number typically has four digits and is sometimes followed by (or appears above) a single letter.  For a time HALDENSLEBEN put gold-colored stickers on its products with its logo printed in red.  Not unusually for an East German concern, little is recorded about the designers that were employed.