We’ve been extremely lucky this year in that we’ve received a fair number of West German pots amongst other retro goodies.  Not only did Aidan and I give each other some fantastic things, but both our families also gave us some amazing things.

Firstly: the Jarvis side (mine)

I’ll save my favourite til last… but to kick things off, how about a lovely, Scandinavian jug and glass set?

We have very merrily been drinking out of these over the Christmas period.  The company is still around (visit them here), but these look more 60s to me. Most of the glasses still have their original sticker, as does the jug. Something about the colour and the frosted effect, and perhaps the time of year we received them, just says, “Christmas!” to me. Therefore, I think these will become my Christmas glasses, brought out for special occasions!

These are the two West German pots my parents gave us for Christmas. My favourite is definitely the one on the right!  Purely by chance, a couple of days after they gave it to us (we had an early Christmas visit), I was reading the Mark Hill blog and found this – that the pots were inspired by prehistoric paintings in caves that were discovered in 1940. The excitement was immense! Now to all the seasoned WG pottery collectors out there, these are probably old hat, but I’m thrilled to bits with it. So, thank you very much Mum and Dad; you did extremely well!

Apologies for the bright pictures, not sure what happened.

There is likely to be another post about this one in the future, as I fully intend to find out more about the glaze. Aidan found some pictures from the caves that matched the pictures on the pot, but I’ll wait til I know a bit more about it before sharing…

Secondly: The Holt side (Aidan’s)

Little did Aidan’s dad know that it wasn’t just a vintage, Kartell stacking system he was giving us as a present… Oh no, it’s actually a new home for a certain retro Italian donkey collection…

Note the two new donkeys down on the bottom shelf…

So, thank you very much to both sides of the family for these gifts and the many others we received!