My tastes are eclectic, but they're good. We started collecting art pottery last year - you know Rookwood, et. al. But it's so expensive. Then I found this: Kroywen Art Pottery by Sheldon Gants.
Actually my mother found it in the late 1940s. She had this ceramic cigarette box, iridescent charcol with a vivid splash of sea foam green and ground turquoise glass in the lid. We could never quite make out the original label, Kro...wen. Anyhow the husband really liked it and she gave it to him. "I had an ashtray in dark brown with the beige flare and red crushed glass, but I think that Cookie's father hung onto it."
So one day last Christmas we were looking at it and decided to try to search the label and duh, found out it is KROYWEN, which is NEW YORK spelled backwards. Duh!
Anyway, Kroywen and Sheldon Gants go hand in hand. It flourished in the late 1940s and then it went away. The designs are abstract, most have this crazed glass pool in the bottom. The ashtrays are MASSIVE in size and weight - some of these ashtrays can handle ten or more cigarettes. Moreover they are relativly inexpensive because smoking is no longer a given in a person's house. The other pieces - bowls, nut dishes, and cigarette boxes - are much harder to find and pricier.
So when I stumbled across this bowl and thought I was going to plotz. I adore it. And it always gets compliments from people who normally don't remark on these types of things.
I hoping to go to the Antique's Roadshow with this in about 15 years and find out that I can retire on it. Keep your fingers crossed.
Fabulous! I collect many ashtrays as they are cheap and the people who had them are dead.
ReplyDeleteNever heard of Kroywen though.
Learn something new everyday.
Fingers crossed that we end up in the same line next to one another.
Pirate - look at this ash tray by Gants (for Kroywen)
ReplyDeleteI love Kroywen, I lost two pieces to "the X" a thousand years ago...
ReplyDeleteI sure do miss them.