It looks like Wedgwood, but it Shafer & Vater, and still very collectible.

By the end of the 19th Century, the porcelain business in Germany was really booming. The Industrial Revolution had created a huge, ravenous middle class in Europe and America, and smart companies aimed right for this growing market.

This was the heyday for many mid-line European porcelain companies like Carl Shuman (CS), Zeh Scherzer (ZS), Carl Tilsch (CT), and all the Schlegelmilch companies, RS and ES, in Thuringia, Silesia, Poland, and the high-end factory in Prussia.

In 1896, two enterprising gentlemen decided they would try to find their niche in this crowded field. Gustav Shafer and Gunter Vater (rhymes with water) opened the company bearing their last names in Volksted Rudolstadt, Thuringia, Germany.

By 1910, S&V had become so successful that their unique and fanciful wares were picked up by the Sears Roebuck catalogue and became available all across America.
Shafer and Vater succeeded because they made the kinds things few other companies would even attempt to make, interesting products of broad popular appeal, and they made them artfully.

The company started by making doll heads, but S&V had more adult products in mind — fun items involving sex and liquor.
Their line of nudes and bathing beauties was more comical than naughty, and their figural liquor bottles were designed to make cocktail time a good time. These were all most popular in the 1920s.

Shafer and Vater also made decorative bisque and majolica wares, not so much to imitate the companies that made these things, but to put their own spin on them.
One type of ware S&V dared to put its own spin on was Wedgwood’s famous jasperware, the finely ground stoneware that resembles porcelain bisque, stained with a colorful dye and decorated with white cameos in relief.

If you have something that you swear is Wedgwood, but isn’t signed, remember that Wedgwood is always signed, so you piece might well be S&V.
It will probably not be as valuable as if it were Wedgwood, but it is still very collectible. Collectors like S&V jasperware for its thick, creamy cameos and romantic motifs. Wedgwood’s cameos are a bit flatter and the motifs are classical.

The best S&V wares were made between 1900 and the 1930s. The company continued in East Germany until 1962. The East German government destroyed the factory and all the molds in 1972.
Shafer and Vater also produced other fun novelties, not only figurines, but tea sets and dessert dishes that made and still make wonderful conversation pieces.

Appraisals: Creamer, sad sack black boy, $170; Creamer, lady cow in lace dress and blue bow, $145; Figurine, two women swimming with bathing suits hanging on a line behind them (nude when turned upside down, $235; Bottle, body builder, $395; Bottle, couple dancing the Apache (a sultry French dance), $450; Hair receiver, blue jasperware, $180; Powder box, heart-shaped, green jasperware, $150.

—Arthur Schwerdt, a certified appraiser, is author of “The Antique Story Book: Finding the Real Value of Old Things” (available at: www.amazon.com), and co-owner of The August Farmhouse Antiques on Route 9 in Swainton. Send your comments or questions, with photo, to aschwerdt@cmcherald.com.