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Description
History of the Rosenthal factory
Philipp Rosenthal (1855-1937) began business in Germany in 1884. Initially he purchased white ware from the company Hutschenreuther which was resold door to door after being hand-painted by his wife Maria. In 1891, he established a factory in Asch, Bohemia and began production of his own white ware.
Into the twentieth century and a more affluent Germany emerged with improved living conditions and a disposable income appeared. Rosenthal spotted the unfilled market and started mass scale production of porcelain aimed at the newly emerging market. In only two generations the family firm expanded into a world class player. With a vision for modern art, freelance artists were employed and the interior decoration business began. In 1910 the art department at Selb was founded employing designers such as Himmelstoss, Karner, Oppel, Holzer-Defanti, Liebermann, Cassmann and many others. The same year the factory won the gold medal for it’s quality porcelain at the world fair Paris. Over the decades other factories were acquired in ceramics, glass, utensils and furniture. It’s top quality porcelain is still admired today for the way they captured their subjects movement, form and liveliness.
Gustav Adolf Bredow (Krefeld 1875 – 1950 Stuttgart)
Gustav Adolf Bredow studied at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf and worked there in the studio of Clemens Buscher and in various other studios and workshops in northern Germany. In 1897 he settled in Stuttgart where one of his main areas of work was sacred sculpture.
During the First World War (possibly on the way back from South America) he fell into British captivity and was sent to the Isle of Man. In the internment camp there , Bredow set up a drawing school in which the painter Franz Sales Gebhardt-Westerbuchberg became one of his pupils.
Despite the general decline of sculpture building in the architecture of the 1920s, he was still successful in this time; for example, his participation in the German Art Exhibition in 1930 in the Munich Glass Palace .
