Germany / Bavaria / Küps:

[1] : Porzellanmanufaktur Karl Klette (1950 until ...)

The small factory was founded in 1950 by Karl-Heinz Klette who next to plain white items also produced a large variety of items decorated in the 'Dresden' style. He later retired and left the business in the hands of his family who until today continue to produce decorational porcelain like gifts and souvenirs. When one takes a closer look at the company background one soon find that the Klette factory address is 'Zettlitzweg 23' while the Porzellanmanufaktur Gisela Keilhauer (which also uses another 'crownded D' mark) states on its homepage that they are located on the same road at house number 21. Interestingly enough, the Keilhauer business is actually registered at Zettlitzweg 23. House number 21 looks more like normal German house while house number 23 is more an industrial building. Take a peek at this image, a combined result of Map24 and GoogleEarth:

kueps_1_00a

In the past the mark shown (including 'Original Germany') was acclaimed to have been used by the 'Porzellanstudio Martha Budich' from Kronach (Bavaria) from 1962 onwards. This definately wrong claim is based on an entry in the Roentgen book of marks; Danckert in his book 'Handbuch des Europäischen Porzellans (1992)' mentions the same connection but notes 'as stated by Roentgen'. Needless to say Roentgen is totally wrong and for years now is using the incorrect attribution even in his 2007 edition (see Book Errata).

The official German trademark register 'Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt' (short D.P.M.A.) shows a registration filed on September 20th 1962 and registered on November 25th 1963: under registration №·780·306 and file number [B27711] one can clearly see that the registrar is Karl-Heinz Klette; this official trademark entry was even renewed on September 21st 2002. One can look up this info free of charge at the D.P.M.A. very easily as they also have an English user interface. If you do not want to go through all that you can also look at this PDF copy of the registry data.

Recently I bumped into various auctions in which a 'certificate' was included. This was - by the respective sellers - claimed to prove that the items were 'genuine Dresden items' which is of course nothing but codswallop. It is merely a 'guarantee' (read as: useless slip of paper) that the item is an original Karl Klette piece and it also mentions that their trademark stands for the 'old Dresden tradition', representing high quality in production and decoration. In no way does this slip of paper actually prove or stand for anything, especially when the products in question are obviously not decorated in Dresden and are also not decorated in any form of true Dresden decoration style, e.g. the famous Dresden florals. With other words: people trying to use this 'certificate' to prove anything are pretty much hopeless.