Three blown glass vases including two sizes of the Marco Vase winner of the Compasso D’Oro award.

Large Marco Vase paglio (straw) color 9.25″ H x 9.25″ D

Small Marco Vase paglio vetro incamiciato (straw exterior with white interior). size 5.5″ H x 7″ D

Tall Vase with ruggled top, vetro incalmo clear and paglio 9.50″ H x 6.25″

The Finnish company, Iittala produced this Art Object/Vase by Tapio Wirkkala for only two years, 1970-1972. Weighing over 14 pounds, it is made by centrifugally forcing glass into a carved wooden mold. These molds were often finished by Wikkala himself. From early spring through summer the Wikkala family would move to their handmade log cabin in Lapland. There Tapio, Rut Bryk and their children explored the natural world around them creating artworks of enduring appeal. Melting ice was a recurring theme for Tapio Wirkkala, and is beautifully depicted in this rare object. Signed Tapio Wirkkala 3441.

Glazed majolica vide-poche with incised decoration and abstract design. There is a small hole by which this can be hung on the wall as decoration.

Ceramist Jacques Blin, was born in, Pierrefonds France in 1920. His university degree was in the aeronautics and automotive field. Initially he taught industrial drawing and worked as an engineer. But by 1949 he abandoned his aeronautics and began to make jewelry and lamps from his home.

He explored ceramics and learned in studios in Paris, Auxon and Indre-et-Loire, evolving into a prominent maker of ceramics.

In 1953 he began exhibiting at Salon des Ateliers d’Art and in 1955 he met the artist Jean Rustin, whose influence helped him refine a distinctive style which is characterized by incised pictographs showing figures and plants. His glazes are cloudy and have rocky effects from his application of Metallic.

In the 1960s he exhibited his work at the Salon des artists Décorateurs and Salon des Tuileries and the Prague Exposition Internationale de la Céramique Contemporaine, where he won the gold medal in 1962. In 1966 he won the silver medal at the Société des Artistes Français. He chaired the Chamber of Ceramists and Art Workshops of France from 1971 to 1991. Jacques Blin died in 1995.

Ceramic bowl with incised pattern of playful fish swimming, by Jacques Pouchain/ L’Atelier Dieulefit. Aqua glaze with gray details.

Jacques Pouchain (1927-2015) trained as an architect in Paris before turning to painting in 1951 and later settling in Dieulefit, in the Drôme. While working at the Coursange faience workshop in nearby Poet-Laval, he developed his ceramic practice, bringing a painter’s eye to the medium and updating its forms and decoration. In 1958, he opened his own studio in Dieulefit, where he first produced functional ceramics with figurative imagery, then moved toward more stylized and abstract designs. Influenced by Nicolas de Staël, his painting gradually shifted toward abstraction, while his ceramics explored themes of femininity and fertility, resulting in work that feels both joyful and shaped by an architectural sensibility.