.: Transitional Art Deco Copper Plate from Carl Deffner :.

After watching the episodes in the excellent documentary in the previous post, we both were quite inspired to find new treasures. This beautiful, floral and geometric copper charger or plant saucer for some quite special flowers, marked Carl Deffner, Esslingen (c. 1910) has design elements of both the Art Nouveau and the Art Deco (Jugendstil) movements, and having inherited his father’s, Carl Ulrich Christian Deffner, metalworks, Maschinenfabrik Esslingen—making of locomotive engines, in 1900 expanded into tableware, the younger Deffner was indeed responsible for many excellent consumer designs that bridged the two styles. Despite operating in a very competitive environment, Deffner continued producing housewares, and industrial products in support of the railroads, until the late 1950s, when elements of the factories were taken over by WMF and Mercedes-Benz.