These Midcentury Porsche Dinner Plates Are Lovely Things

I’m in LA right now, helping to get stuff ready for the looming Monterey Car Week, where we will do our best to be your eyes, ears, noses, and throats, as well as shooting some video stuff, including driving some interesting Porsches over at Galpin’s Porsche dealership in Santa Clarita. That place is pretty incredible, the sort of place that would ordinarily do all it could to keep deadbeats like myself out, but I, you know know a guy.

Anyway, this dealership has a sort of museum in its lower level, and while I’ve seen some of the things contained in those illuminated vitrines before, this time I actually really looked into one of them, and was delighted by what I saw within. And now I want to share it with you, because only jackasses hoard delight.

Also: feels good to use the word “vitrine.” I get the opportunity so rarely. Too bad it sounds so much like “latrine.” Though, to be fair, “latrine” is maybe the prettiest word for a toilet, with the least pretty (non slang) term being “commode,” I think.

Anyway, what was in that vitrine was Porsche-related, but nothing you could drive, at least not easily. They were a series of plates, Porsche promotional plates, dating from the early 1960s, each painted with a little scene of people living what appear to be pleasant lives of leisure, with their Porsche 356s nearby.

I did a little research and found that these were factory gifts, given to some employees and bigshots that visited the factory. They may have been available for purchase, but I’m not certain about that, not only not having been alive then, but even if I was, I’m not sure I’d have what the Porsche factory considered VIP status.

They were made by the firm Ulmer Keramik, which started making hand-painted ceramics, and then later moved into screen printed works for larger production runs. These Porsche plates are clearly screen printed ones, and for me at least, that’s where their charm comes from. The hand-painted ones are lovely in their own way, sure, but they’re more traditional and ornate, and I’m kind of a sucker for the sorts of restrictions imposed by screen printing and the way that affects the resulting aesthetic.

It seems an artist named Ernst Konrad did most of the company’s screen printed designs, so I think we can safely attribute these works to him. He’s a master of his craft, at least based on these. I mean, just look at them:

Look at this beach scene, for example. Sure, that’s a pretty improbable parking spot they got in their 356, but we can look past that. I think this is using six screens: purple, blue, yellow, red, black and orange. The shapes are simple, but evocative, there’s some nice texture work in the mountain’s reflection on the water and in the shadows, and I love the way the sailboats are simply defined by the absence of any color.

The Porsche, understandably, gets more detail than the rest of the scene, with a license plate that suggests these are from 1960. I also like how you can see the exhaust tips exiting through the rear bumper guards (first seen on 356s in 1958.)

This ski scene is nice, too, though I question that driver’s judgement, driving around with the top down on a snowy mountain. I mean, it does feel good to do that, if I’m honest, with the heater cranked and the top down, making you feel like you’re driving around in a little bathtub of hot air.

I take that back, then. I get why that driver is driving with the top down.

Also interesting is how the details on the Porsche are picked out in white, with no use of, say, the black screen to show the cutlines or other details or even tires. I like the purple shadows, too, though the shadows of those skis are a bit odd.

This one of that nightclub named for a black cat is charming, too, with a multiheaded streetlight by that 356, and a nice starry sky and some Mondrian-ish architecture of that club. Note how nicely minimal the lady’s dress is, too, just two lines/squiggles on a bit of negative white space. This guy Ernst knows his shit.

These plates are just really nice, cheery examples of good midcentury screenprint design, and I get why they’re so coveted by collectors. Oh, and that vitrine had one more thing that I couldn’t initially identify. Let’s see if you can:

I thought at first this might be a ski pole or a walking stick kind of thing, but in some ways, it’s actually the opposite. It’s a seat! It’s for watching polo matches, apparently, which don’t tend to have grandstands or anything like that. If you want a seat, I guess it’s either on a horse or something like this. The top butterfly part folds closed into a sort of handle. It’s cool!

I think this is the most non-license plate plate-related content we’ve had on the site so far. Big day!