HISTORY

 

European Folk Pottery

 

In the 19th- century Prussia, during the barren months of winter, enterprising farmers in the village of Bunzlau, directed their attentions away from the soil and focused on the clay that lay beneath it. Transformed at the potter’s wheel, rich deposits of clay became milk pitchers and mixing bowls that brightened local kitchens and supplemented farming incomes until spring - and the farmers themselves became folk artists.

 

Cheerful, graphic decorations elevated Bunzlau’s creations from the purely functional. With a raw potato cut in the form of a stamp, imaginative artisans applied bold lead-free enamels to the potter’s buff-white body. Concentric rings mimicked the irisdescent  “eye” of a peacock feather: straight, thin lines recalled the symmetrically placed posts of a rose-garden fence.

 

Today, potters in the village of Bunzlau, now a part of Poland, create authentic reproductions of these 19th- century wares, emplying techniques virtually identical to those used by Prussia's country potters more than a century ago. Displaying the characteristic strength and warmth of an object made by hand, each piece provides a comforting sense of continuity in a constantly changing world.

 

 

Zofia’s Polish Pottery   -   Friedhofstr. 77   -     D- 67688 Rodenbach  -  Phone +49 (0) 6374 / 80 23 34