Italian Animal Motif Handled Pottery Bowl from ARS Artigiana Deruta, 1950s

A wonderfully characterful mid-century Italian art pottery bowl by ARS Artigiana of Deruta, decorated with an expressive collection of naïve animal and botanical motifs.

The shallow freeform bowl features a warm taupe ground densely worked with raised white slip decoration, creating an almost lace-like textured surface. Hand-painted amongst the pattern are a wonderfully stylised giraffe, bird or cockerel, snail, flowers and foliage, picked out in muted red, yellow, blue, green and orange.

A turquoise glaze defines the softly scalloped edge and two large sculptural loop handles, giving the piece a particularly distinctive silhouette. The reverse is finished in a mottled turquoise glaze and bears the hand-painted maker's mark “ARS Artigiana, Deruta, Italy”, together with the number 1395, believed to be a pattern or form reference.

Made in Deruta, Umbria — one of Italy's historic centres of ceramic production — the piece combines traditional Italian pottery techniques with the playful, graphic aesthetic associated with post-war decorative ceramics.

An unusual and highly decorative piece of Italian mid-century pottery that works equally well displayed as an object in its own right or used as a shallow bowl.