Red Wing "Party Ware" Designed by Charles Murphy

"Party Ware" from Red Wing

Available on our Etsy site.
Red Wing "Party Ware" Plate & Bowl

Hard to find, Charles Murphy designed "Party Ware" line plate and bowl from Red Wing. Mid Century ceramic serving plate and bowl with a fabulous free-form shape. The "Party Ware" line included different fruit motifs including grapes (this pattern), apples, cherries, and pears. Back is glazed in a deep, metallic brown/black.

These pieces are not marked "Red Wing" on the back, so it took some time to figure out just what they were.

Red Wing began producing the "Party Ware" line in the late 1940s.

After some digging around, we found that the Party Ware line consisted of twelve different free-form shapes with four patterns and three back colors. Altogether, that makes a total of 144 possible combinations to collect. Since the pattern had such a variety of shapes, and they didn't stack, you needed a lot of cupboard space to store these. Possibly one of the reasons that this pattern wasn't produced for very long and is hard to find today.

You could spend a lifetime looking for all the different mix-and-match patterns. So, if you're looking for Party Ware pieces, or thinking about starting a collection, here are some things to look for.

The four different patterns consisted of:

• Apples
• Cherries
• Grapes
• Pears

The styles were all numbered from 100 through 111. These items are numbers 101 for the bowl and 104 for the plate.

The back colors are:

• Chartreuse
• Gray
• Metallic Brown

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Rosenthal-Netter Italian Ceramic Bowl

What an awesome find!!

We just ran across this amazing, mid-centrury, Italian ceramic bowl, and it turns out it is a Rosenthal-Netter commissioned bowl from the early '60's. Not sure if it was made for Rosenthal-Netter by Bitossi or a different Italian ceramics firm from that time period.

On the bottom, the bowl is marked, "Italy" with a stylized "T" that crosses over most of the word. There is also a marking of "49/6B". The bowl does not have the original Rosenthal-Netter sticker on it, but we have seen the same style bowl, with the same stylized "Italy" and "49/6B", and a vase of the same pattern, both with the "Created in Italy for Rosenthal-Netter, Inc." tag. Based on what we have seen, we are confident that this is indeed a Rosenthal-Netter piece.

Italian ceramics from the '50's and '60's are, at times, difficult, if not impossible, to identify correctly without the labels. Even with the labels, the maker or designer of a piece may not be stated.

There does seem to be some confusion, though, about Rosenthal-Netter, another company called Raymor, and Italian pottery from the '50's and '60's. Many people think that Rosenthal-Netter and Raymor created ceramic pieces. They did not. They were US importers of Italian ceramic items.

Both Rosenthal-Netter and Raymor imported pieces from Bitossi and other Italian ceramics makers. In addition to commissioning some special pieces, they also bid for stock pieces. Because of this, some pieces imported by Rosenthal-Netter can look very similar to pieces imported by Raymor.

Another area of confusion is with the Italian makers themselves, notably, Bitossi.

Often times people refer to Bitossi as a designer, but Bitossi was a manufacturer of ceramics. The head designer at Bitossi during the '50's and '60's was Aldo Londi. Of course, not all Bitossi pieces were designed by Aldo Londi so a Bitossi piece may not be an Aldo Londi piece.

Confusing? You bet.

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Vintage Hanging Ashtray in Mod Red Swirl Glaze

Very cool, very mod, vintage hanging ashtray with a wonderful red, orange, yellow and black swirled glaze.

You could use this as a hanging planter or turn it into a hanging lamp. The hook at the top has basic lamp hardware so it would be simple to thread an electric cord into it.

We found this hanging ashtray at a local consignment shop. We were surprised that it had been there for several months before we picked it up. We go into that shop a couple times a month and we had never seen it before.

Where was it hiding? We don't know.

Why hadn't anyone else picked up the awesome piece? Some questions just can't be answered.

Anyway ... Here it is.

The piece isn't marked, so we have no idea who made it.

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