GinFor's Odditiques and W. German pottery have been mentioned in Metropolitan Home, House Beautiful (July 2008), Country Living (November, 2008), and Antiques Roadshow Insider (January, 2009).

We offer one of the finest selections of W. German pottery available in the US.

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Welcome to
G
in-For's Odditiques

(GINny and FORrest Poston's Oddities and Antiques)

Join our West German Pottery group on Facebook.


(Cats and batteries not included)

Head for the GinFor's Odditiques Home Page

Information About W. German pottery:

Introduction to Lava, Volcanic Glazes

Collecting WG Pottery

West German Pottery Marks, Companies, Designers

Thoughts About Values

Photo Gallery (previously sold items to help with identification)

W. German Pottery News and Updates

Ruscha Catalog

Videos

Categories


   West German Pottery (standard view)




Additional Options for WGP:

View by Company:
BayCarstensCeramanoD&BESJasbaOttoRothRuschaScheurichSteuler, Others (Great items that we don't have enough of to make their own category.)




View by Size:
Floor Vases (14" and taller)

View by Price:
WGP Under $100

 
Art Pottery, Porcelain, etc.

   Glass

   Metalware, misc.

  Paintings, prints, etc.


Special Pages

         
About Us and Contact Information   (Phone, mailing address, etc.)

Meet our "staff "   

Essays and Other Goodies

To Buy or Not to Buy: Going Where Price Guides End

The Art of Attending Auctions

Get the Picture Straight
: The Basics of Selling Glass and Pottery on the Net

Tiffanyfakes.com (Site Review)


Just for Fun

The Cor-purr-ate Story (Glyph's Rise to Power)

A Tribute to Fractured Fairy Tales: Dealing with the Wolf at the Door


A Special Farewell to a Staff Member
The Cat With a Bucket List



Links


Philosophy and Nonsense:
Writing, Education,
Odd Thoughts and
other essays (my
"other" site)

Gin-For's Odditiques consists of Ginny and Forrest Poston. I'm the one being used as a cat cushion in the pictures above. Ginny has the more refined picture.  I wanted top billing, but Forgin didn't seem to have quite the right ring to it somehow.  The odditiques part comes from our taste for unusual items, some just uncommon, others that are different in form or color. (Oddities combined with antiques equals Odditiques.)  I also like clean, classic lines when they're well done, but sometimes I've just got to have some eye-popping color, or form that goes in unexpected, somehow pleasing, directions.  As you might guess, that's what led to our interest in West German pottery.  When we started attending auctions in 1991, I bid on anything bright and cheap.  I didn't know the difference between grand, gaudy, and garish.  Since those were the days when we were buying box lots for a couple of dollars, it wasn't too much of a problem.

     Fortunately for us all, Ginny got one of her undergraduate degrees (I married a triple major.) in art before going on to Art History in graduate school.  She also has eyes that often see colors differently---one eye picking up warmer shades than the other, which has made her particularly aware of color variations.   After hearing her say, "You bought what" or "You paid how much" often enough, I finally learned to see, not just look.  I finally realized that something can be colorful, even gaudy, without being garish.  I'm getting better at the difference between a piece that catches your eye and one that brings your eye back for long looks.  The best are the pieces that make you smile when you enter the room, even though that piece has been on that same shelf for years.

     I can't tell you what you'll find on our site at any given time.  Sure, there will be American art pottery and American art glass, the things so popular in our country, but there will also be European art pottery, European art glass, dinnerware, metalware from all over, paintings, etchings, most anything that one or both of us looks at and goes, "Oh, yeah" or "Mine, mine, all mine" (Daffy Duck/Bugs Bunny).  We buy from numerous sources.  In addition to local auctions, I still roam to auctions and shops from Illinois to Ohio, and I pick up some neat oddities with some quirky searches on the internet.  With luck, we'll have new items every few days, just so you'll have to keep dropping in.

     You'll find at least one cat pictured on every page. You'll also find them featured on the "staff" page and the "Cor-purr-ate Story". The four included in our main picture are Sergeant Major (in the lap), Lady Selena (front center), Lancelot (with his tail draped over the Lady), and Triscuit keeping himself above the fray. We lost the "Mister Cat"(Sergeant Major) and Lady within two months of each other. After that, we added Glyph, also known as Glyph-the-Destroyer, who at about 6 months old managed to crack the toilet and the sink in one leap.  Some people find the cats "unprofessional," but we prefer a more relaxed, personal approach to everything, including business.  It doesn't mean we are any less careful in our selections or other business practices.

     On the non-business related side, Ginny teaches Art History and Humanities at the University of Southern Indiana.  Given the chance, I teach college level English (20th century literature and composition), but my tendency to give preference to students over procedure seems to bother people, usually just one administrator, but one's enough.  We're both still writing dissertations that should have been finished long, long ago and hoping for an eventual return to the Appalachian hills.  Given my special talent for bringing out latent insecurities in college administrators, that may take us a while yet.  I do most of the buying, so some of the items you see here will prove my sometimes odd tastes.  While Ginny's taste is typically better, she does go for peculiar choices at times, too.  Well, she did marry me, after all.

Experience: We started as collectors back in 1991 and became dealers when the house and garage were filled from boxlots about a year later. We started selling online back when eBay was small enough that you could browse the entire pottery section in a couple of hours. You can check our eBay feedback under the user name ginfor.  The antiques are a hobby when I'm also teaching and full time otherwise, most of the time. 

Over the years, I've published a few stories in Antique Week and one each in the Journal of the American Art Pottery Association and Northeastern.  Three of the essays about W. German pottery are among those included on this site.  In 2008 and the beginning of 2009, we were mentioned in conjunction with West German pottery in "House Beautiful", "Country Living", "Metropolitan Home", and "Antique Roadshow Insider".

On my Philosophy and Nonsense site, you can read more of my essays plus some poems.  While many of the essays focus on writing and education, there are also stories about how much the universe sometimes bends to help, and how I could still mess it up, meeting a fairy-god princess at Hollywood Video, and a variety of other subjects.

If you have any questions, just get in touch.  You'll find contact information in the right-hand column.
Contact Information 

E-mail: ginfor@earthlink.net

Regular Mail:
729 N. Sonntag Ave.
Evansville, IN  47712

Phone:  812-467-0191


Examples From the Past


A West German vase by Scheurich (We currently specialize in W. German pottery and have led the way in that field since about 1995.)



Belgian art pottery signed Alexandre


Watercolor portrait by Frank Allen


Hadeland Glass sculpture


Unattributed vase adapting a Leger painting


Landseer lion by John Derbyshire