Product Description
Gustavo Perez, Mexican Contemporary Pottery, Ceramic vase 2000

GUSTAVO PEREZ Mexico
Stoneware vase 2000
Black, randomly positioned rectangles on a cream / sandy base with a pinned overlap detail
Signed: GP 2000-68
H: 9 1/4″ x D: 6 1/2″
Price: $5,500
Gustavo Pérez makes vessels that are simple, smooth and symmetrical. Their elegance is due to the precision of the incised lines and other markings on the pots. While using the same clay body—sand colored stoneware—throughout his work, the artist achieves a wide range of form and pattern and includes slowly undulating walls beneath the subtly incised surfaces.
Gustavo Pérez works are incessantly experimental. There have been parallel lines, calligraphic traces, geometric cuts into the surface, minimalist vessels, recollections of pre-Hispanic vases and references to other ancient cultures.
The ceramics of Gustavo Pérez are distinguished by eliminating superfluous details, by synthesis of his elements. During the past two decades he has created a visual language that seems closely aligned with music. Pure in form, with a significant structure, completely abstract and without specific associations, his language of line, the bending of forms, and the definition of the vessel mark his work as a distinctive voice. The form is not just a container or a receptacle; it is architecture.
Gustavo Perez, Mexican Contemporary Pottery, Ceramic vase 2000
FONTANA ARTE Milan, Italy
“Glass fruit” bookends c. 1950
Glass, chromium-plated brass
For more information see: Fontana Arte, Una storia Trasparente, Laura Falconi (Milan: Skira, 1998).
H: 5” x W: 3 3/8” x D: 5”
Price: $3,500
SALVATORE MELI (b. 1929) Italy
Important Sculpture / Ewer 1952
Glazed terra cotta, brown and dark green with white scraffito decoration, original stepped and angular wood base.
Signed: Meli 1952 Roma
For more info on Meli see: Design 1935-1965, What Modern was, ed. Martin Eidelberg (New York: Harry Abrams, 1991) p. 237.
Salvatore Meli belongs to that initial group of artists, including Guido Gambone and Lucio Fontana among others, who elevated Italian ceramics to a fine art during the post-war period. Meli conceived this vessel, first on paper, then by laboriously constructing the body in clay, coil by coil, to achieve the richly textured and dynamic form; the incised and painted decoration is in concert with the organic shape. The massive scale of this work defies function as a ewer but was created as a sculptural object. The original wooden base recalls Italian futurist sculpture forms of the early twentieth century.
H (with base): 23 1/2” x W: 13” x D: 9.5”
H (without base): 19 1/8”
Price: $27,500
GEORGES SERRÉ (1889-1956) France
Vase c. 1925
Warm ivory /sand colored glazed stoneware with hand incised stylized leaf and floral motif with a top collar and lower half in a softened geometric repeat pattern all in a light brown tonality.
Marks: G Serre (hand incised signature)
For more information see: La Céramique Art Déco, Edgar Pelichet (Paris: Bibliothèque des Arts, 1988), p. 47.
For more information on Serré see: Georges Serré, exhib. cat. (Paris: Galerie Landrot, 1992).
H: 11″ x Dia: 10″
DÉSIRÉ CHRISTIAN (1846-1907) France
MEISENTHAL (LOTHRINGEN) France/Germany
Gourd vessel in the Japanese taste c. 1885-90
Wheel-carved and martelé French cameo glass with metallic inclusions and applied glass (blossoms, tendrils and butterflies)
Signed on the bottom: Desire Christian, Meisenthal Loth
For information on Désiré Christian see: The Glass of Désiré Christian, Ghost for Gallé, Jules S. Traub (Chicago: The Art Glass Exchange, 1978).
H: 8 1/2″ x Dia: 4″