Rare Bauhaus Ceramic "Zuckerdose" by Uffrecht & Co., Neuhaldensleben, Germany

Rare Bauhaus ceramic "Zuckerdose" by Uffrecht & Co., Neuhaldensleben — circa 1931, museum-documented model

A striking piece of German Bauhaus-era ceramic design. This lidded sugar box (Zuckerdose) was produced by J. Uffrecht & Co., Neuhaldensleben, one of the notable stoneware manufactories of the Haldensleben ceramics district in Saxony-Anhalt. The identical model and hand-painted decor is held in the collection of the Aichi Prefectural Ceramics Museum (Japan), acquired in 1931 (Showa 6) by the Aichi Prefectural Product Exhibition Center — evidence of the international export reach of German industrial ceramic design during this period.

The Piece

The box sits on a deep petrol-blue glazed base with rounded, architectonic edges — a form language indebted to the Bauhaus vocabulary of clean geometry over ornament. The lid inverts the palette: a crackled ivory-white ground animated by a rhythmic hand-painted pattern of cobalt-blue dashes, dark graphic strokes, and citrus-yellow dots, centered on a sculptural blue tab handle. The interplay of a restrained, monochrome body against a playful, semi-abstract lid decor is characteristic of the experimental glaze and decor work coming out of German stoneware ateliers in the early 1930s, as manufacturers translated Bauhaus and Art Deco ideas into everyday tableware.

 Dimensions : Height: 5 cm / 2 in - Length: 14.5 cm / 5.7 in - Depth: 8.5 cm / 3.35 in

Marks : Stamped "Made in Germany" to the underside, with an impressed form number and hand-inscribed decor number, consistent with the factory's practice of marking form and decor separately.

About Uffrecht & Co. Founded by **Jacob Uffrecht** in the mid-19th century, the firm became one of the principal stoneware manufactories of Neuhaldensleben, a town whose economy — like much of the surrounding district — was built substantially around ceramic production. By the early 20th century, Uffrecht had passed to Jacob's descendants, and by the 1930s the firm operated within the orbit of the **Carstens** ceramics group, one of the most significant German pottery conglomerates of the era. Carstens acquired the firm outright in 1936. After WWII, the Neuhaldensleben works passed into East German state hands as VEB Haldensleben, while the Carstens family re-established production in West Germany as the now well-known Carstens Tönnieshof.

The Bauhaus Connection Uffrecht's design output in this period is associated with Hildegard Delius (1896–1955), a designer whose work channeled the Bauhaus's architectural rigor — stylized, evenly arched forms, geometric restraint — into decorative ceramics, at a moment when the Bauhaus's design philosophy was actively reshaping German applied arts. This box's clean-edged, architectonic silhouette sits squarely within that idiom, while its hand-painted lid decor reflects the more experimental, semi-abstract glaze and paintwork German ceramicists were exploring alongside strict Bauhaus geometry. 

Why This Piece Matters Pieces from this specific moment in Uffrecht's production — pre-dating the 1936 Carstens takeover — are scarce, and rarer still with independent, dated provenance. A matching example held in a Japanese museum collection, acquired the same year, corroborates both the date and the piece's historical distribution as an exported design object, lending this a level of documentation collectors rarely get with small decorative ceramics of this age.

Colors may slightly vary due to photographic lighting sources or your monitor settings.

 Wear consistent with age and use.