Featured Thomas (Rosenthal) vase - who designed this?

I have a Thomas (Rosenthal) vase which I really love, and I'd like to know who designed it. An example of the vase is show below.

It's made by Thomas Porzellan (which is part of Rosenthal), and is a vase from the Blütenfest (Blossom Festival) series. It's oval, 24 high, with an impressed mark '304-24' (I think 304 is the model/design and 24 is the height). It has a "Thomas Germany" stamp which was used between 1959 and 1977, so I think it was made somewhen between these dates.

All good so far but I'd like to know who designed the vase and that's where the internet isn't helping. Sale listings for identical vases attribute both Rosamonde Nairac and Tapio Wirkkala as the designer (and it surely can't have been designed by both people), and the design is called "Morphological Forest", "Wave" & "Surf" in different places (I think it looks like a wave or surf but would like to know for sure).

What I'd like is a definitive and accurate source that I can view, or contact or even buy, to find the correct details.

I'm hoping someone here might be able to steer me in the right direction?

Thank you and kind regards,

Joe

 

Have you tried emailing Rosenthal themselves?

 

Tough one. Probably if there is any way to contact Rosenthal as OBB suggested, that would be your best bet. Joe, you've done a lot of the research already and it's a pretty specific question, but who knows maybe someone here will have further insights.

Can see why you love the vase. Really great design!

You might want to add a photo of the mark on the base in case that is a clue for someone here.

 

Great vase. The designers you mentioned made designs for Rosenthal's "studio linie" (studio line) and those are/were quite saleable -- very MCM and on into the 1980/90s with the Versace stuff. I dunno if the studio line is still being produced. The Thomas line was considered Rosenthal's more modest line ("cheaper") but regardless, this is nice.

 

Now, why didn't I think of that!

I'll have a dig through their web pages and hope that I can find an e-mail address (and hope that they have someone who speaks English).

 

They'll absolutely speak English, they do so much export. I think the problem is that several designers did similar styles pieces. Manfred Frey for Kaiser for example.

 

Beautiful design! Update this thread if you learn who the designer was. We like updates!

 

I don't know the answer to your question and hopefully someone at Rosenthal can help.

This particular person thinks it's by Nairac and they believe it's called "Splash". It does still have the Thomas Blütenfest sticker at least. Of course incorrect information floats freely on the web.

The mark they show on their vase I think dates from 1978-1998 though don't know if it's the same as yours.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/102769...-1-2&pro=1&edd=1&sts=1&organic_search_click=1


Thomas mark on that listing I think
https://www.porcelainmarksandmore.com/germany/bavaria/speichersdorf-01/index.php

 

Most of what I'm seeing on google is that it's a design by Tapio Wirkkala who did designs for Rosenthal's studio line. But, emailing Rosenthal may settle it!

 

Reading this implies that the german producer Rosenthal still exists. What you see today is the BRAND Rosenthal, owned by the italian Sambonet Paderno (who have Rosenthal-branded items produced in Italy and elsewhere, including China). All archive material re:Rosenthal was in 2009/2010 taken over by the national german Porzellanikon museum, meaning that questions or requests come with a price tag; it may also take up to two years for them to answer (as per their terms of service).

Read as: Rosenthal today is a hollow shell and many employees know nothing about its former product history, on the other hand two years back a salesperson from a "Rosenthal Studio Line" branded store in Germany could still help me out. You'd have to be really lucky to get in touch with somebody who knows his/her stuff, especially as the item in question was made at the Thomas factory; not everything done there was known at Rosenthal HQ (for various reasons).

So, fingers crossed and Good Luck!

 

Chris great to hear from you!

I've spent a good bit of time looking for a list or some sort of documentation of Tapio Wirkkala's designs thinking that someone would publish a list of someone so famous. I do like his work.

I wonder if contacting these people might prove fruitful. They are a foundation dedicated to Wirkkala and his wife Bryk. They say that they have 8,000 cataloged original drawings and sketches and they also have porcelain objects and prototypes designed for Rosenthal by Wirkkala.

http://wirkkalabryk.fi/kokoelma/

 

Ah, good to "see" you again, Chris. Yes, sad to hear that Rosenthal has gone the way of many quality factories and been bought out and production outsourced to "southeast Asia." So Wirkkala and other Studio Line designers would've produced stuff for Thomas as well?

 

Even though they all were part of the Rosenthal group the chemistry between the different production facilities was not always perfect. "some parts were MORE equal" and so the main Rosenthal facility not only wanted the cake, they also wanted all of the icing on top. This lead to absurd situations. Artists had to literally apply for a contract with Rosenthal and could be (a) accepted or (b) told to apply at a daughter company like Thomas (as in: "not good enough for the Studio Line"). In case (b) Rosenthal still closely monitored proceedings - as soon as the corresponding artist sales rose above a given margin, Rosenthal snatched them back.

This caused so much internal dispute that Thomas received the go-ahead for what later became the "Atelier Collection"; the Thomas branch was allowed to sign on artists as they liked. Rosenthal on the other hand could still check if an artist was worth it but then they had to officially buy out the contract from Thomas.

This may sound peculiar, but all subsidiaries had to constantly turn in business reports and prove their financial wellbeing - supporting aggressive competitive behaviour between subsidiaries was nothing new. During the earlier years, an artist grabbed back by Rosenthal was counted as direct financial loss for the subsidiary as the lost revenue had a negative impact on the annual report; the corresponding factory received no form of compensation. Under the new agreement on artist acquisition and development a subsidiary received financial compensation based on the overall expected "value" of an artist. This not only helped to end many internal quarrels but also offered Rosenthal a method of cashing in on certain tax benefits.

This only offers a little insight on how far internal affairs affected certain decisions and why parts of this were never published. It is hard - if not impossible, sometimes - to directly state which artist worked for a given part of the Rosenthal group during a certain period of time. Even placing a finger on the corresponding factory can prove difficult as all info was treated ever so confidentially.

If artists (or their heirs) still have the paperwork at hand that would be quite a treasure seeing that the former legal entity "Rosenthal AG" is history and near all corresponding material is locked up at the Porzallanikon museum, probably never to be published. The proprietors from Italy did not claim full legal succession status, it would therefore be well worth it to check if the corresponding paperwork can be seen as public domain material nowadays.

 

Thanks for the explanation, Chris! So informative, as ever. Makes you realize how internecine the workings of some of these large companies were!