Man Gave Name To All The Animals

When I started collecting West-German Pottery, I was solely focused on vases. They are of course easily recognizable by the W.-Germany markings on the bottom. Then one day I was at a local church sale and I spotted a little rhino bank that had the same markings on the bottom. What??? In addition to crazy coloured and textured vases, these Germans also made pottery animals? My interest was piqued.

I picked up the Rhino, which I sadly don't have in my possession anymore - I just have too many stuff, and this had to go - and did more research.

Some internet trawling landed me on the fabulous website http://www.ginforsodditiques.com/ where I found old images of a Ruscha catalogue, including a lot of animals! 

WOW, so many animals!

This was the first time I saw an image of the famous Ruscha Bull, and I just needed to have one. At the time I worked for an auction house, and I was very much into checking out the catalogues of all the medium and smaller auction houses in the neighbourhood for West-German pottery.

And lo and behold, after a few months a bull turned up. IN VULKANO GLAZE. Luckily for me, it wasn't described as being Ruscha, and although it was slightly more than I wanted to pay (auction fever!), I got it for a good prize.

The bull on the left started it all

I still find it absolutely stunning. It is such a strong design. This vulkano glazed bull has pride of place in my living room.

Thanks to my husband and parents, my collection has now grown quite a lot. It's quite the zoo!

Bull on the left and right are not Ruscha, bull in the middle is.

Some of my favourites are the beautiful blue bull that was gifted to me for Christmas a few years back, and the stunning Vulkano elephant.

I still don't know why Ruscha made so many of these animals. But they definitely seem to have the largest zoo. I know that some other factories like Bay (bull, elephant, some animal shaped money banks), Karlsruhe (bulls), Pan (bird, kangaroo), and Steuler (animal shaped money banks) have made animals, but they always seem a minor part of the overall production. For Ruscha they seemed to be an important part.

The catalogue on Ginfors odditiques also shows a statue of the Three Wise Monkeys. I would love to add this to my collection, but I have never seen it in real life or online. A few weeks ago I thought that it finally happened, but it turned out to be this cute version by Goebel. Although this is also very pretty, I still hope I'll find the Ruscha version one day. Any leads would be  appreciated ;)