‘So ready was our tourist to be won over by such an allure, that shortly afterwards he abandoned his carefree summer holiday and, accepting the mischievous whims of fortune, became the most absorbed and attentive workman imaginable. Carried away by his vital need to discover all, he suddenly succumbed, and with infinite delight, to the temptation -provoked, whether consciously or not, by himself -to penetrate the mysteries of earth and fire. With fitting reverence he approached this magical material, so sensitive to a mere stroke of the thumb yet so implacable in its reactions to the least variations of humidity, so stubborn in the hands of the uncomprehending yet so docile when treated with respect, a material so fragile while it is still in the shaping, totally dazzled from its recent metamorphosis for all that, in order to become from then on incombustible and imperishable, still to be purified by the terrifying ordeal of fire.’ (G. Ramié, Ceramics of Picasso, Barcelona, 1985, p. 7).

The present work has remained in the same important private Italian collection since the present owner's father purchased it in the early 1960s.
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