Who was Carl Scheidig and why is his porcelain famous?

Carl Scheidig porcelain has become a popular search topic among collectors looking for German porcelain figures from the twentieth century. Carl Scheidig was a German porcelain manufacturer rather than a single artist. The company was founded in 1906 in Gräfenthal, a town in Thuringia, Germany, that region had already built a strong reputation for porcelain production dating back to the eighteenth century, with dozens of factories operating within a short distance of one another.

Carl Scheidig specialised in decorative porcelain figurines, animal models, children, dancers, historical characters and elegant ladies and many pieces were hand painted after firing, giving each figure small differences in colour and brushwork. Skilled painters often spent several hours finishing one figurine before it left the factory. The company continued production through changing political periods in Germany, including the years before the First World War, the Weimar Republic, the Second World War and the years of East Germany. Production methods changed over time, though the factory remained known for detailed porcelain figures.