Large Glazed Ceramic Dish with Abstract Banded Blue Decoration, French circa 1970

A large and striking circular ceramic dish of considerable decorative authority, glazed with an abstract composition of horizontal bands in a range of blues — from deep indigo-violet at the upper register through an electric cobalt to a softer turquoise — separated and articulated by narrow bands of metallic gold-bronze that catch the light with the brilliance of fired lustre. The overall effect is strongly evocative of a landscape seen at the horizon: a sky of deep blue above, a glittering seam of gold — the line where land meets light — and a calmer expanse of blue below, though the composition is abstract enough to resist any single reading and rewards contemplation on purely formal terms.

The glaze quality is high throughout, the blues achieved with a depth and saturation that suggests the careful management of cobalt and other mineral colorants through controlled firing. The metallic bands have the warm shimmer of a gold or bronze lustre glaze, applied with precision to create clean horizontal divisions. The dish’s circular form — 44 centimetres across — gives the composition an expansive, almost mural-like presence; it is large enough to function as a wall piece as well as a table or console centrepiece.

Such large glazed ceramic dishes with abstract landscape-derived decoration were a celebrated product of French studio ceramics in the 1960s and 70s, when a generation of potters and ceramicists working in the south of France and in the workshops of Paris combined the influence of modern painting with deep knowledge of the glaze tradition. This piece, with its assured palette and precise technical execution, is a characteristic and distinguished example of that moment. French craftwork, circa 1970.