An unusually large San Marino vase with 'Smalto Roccia' or 'Lava' glaze. The brightly colored blue panel illustrates a Mediterranean rock pool, including a jellyfish and various colorful creatures swimming about amid swaying sea grass.

San Marino 1950s slip-moulded bisque items are fragile and rarely found in such good condition.

Mark Hill, in his comprehensive text on Italian Ceramics, 'Alla Moda: Italian Ceramics of the 1950s-70s’, notes of the larger bottle vases by San Marino that, '...their large sizes, [and] the quality of the decoration is comparatively very high. Both factors make them extremely rare today' (p.173, Alla Moda, Mark Hill, 2012).

MEASURES

46.5 cm tall x 16 cm diam

CONDITION

There is no damage to this vase. There are the usual production faults as with all San Marino - a popped glaze bubble here and there, stripes of background wash show through the top glaze.