This distinctive piece was produced by the firm Carstens Tönnieshof and some pieces with similar decoration (but a different shape and colour scheme) and similar markings underneath carry their label as well. The Carstens family had a long history as ceramics and porcelain manufacturers in Germany dating back to the nineteenth century but at the end of the second world war their businesses failed and all the factories situated in East Germany were expropriated. But in 1946 Ernst Carsten, a son of one of the original founders, and his son, Christian, started a new factory in Fredelsloh called Carstens Tönnieshof. (Tönnieshof was the name of the farm where the factory was established.) Production started in 1947 and the new business was soon successful with around 400 employees by the early 1950s. Expansion continued and in the 1970s branches were established in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Australia and Austria to be followed, unfortunately, by the collapse of the business which filed for bankruptcy in 1977, although it was then taken over by its employees and operated with a different trading name, Kiel Atelier, until 1984.

Carstens employed a variety of designers including, for a time, Trude Carstens, the wife of Ernst Carstens junior, but the most famous was Heinz Siery who worked for the company from 1959 to 1967. This flask is known to have been one of his last designs for the firm and was produced from 1968 onwards. The glaze was known as Manila and is found in white and blue as well as red. Carstens was nearly unique amongst the West German ceramics producers in that it sometimes used a truncated form of ‘GERMANY’ when marking its pieces, as can be seen here.