Pair Of Trompe l'Oeil Morels

This astonishing pair of morels seems more real than real.
These trompe l'oeils were a specialty of Provençal ceramist Marcel Figuères. Marcel Figuères, born in 1928 and deceased in 2017, crossed the 20th century with the passion and talent of 19th-century ceramists.
Relentlessly, he sought to master the material, its firing and its decoration to create virtuoso pieces. After beginning his career as a ceramist with the Massiers in Vallauris, he attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Marseille, where he met his future wife Gilberte, who worked at the St-Jean du Désert earthenware factory, with whom they created their own workshop in 1952.

Among the various specialties he explored, Marcel Figuères excelled from the 1980s in the art of naturalistic trompe-l'oeil, inspired by elders like Bernard Palissy while researching new ceramic finishing materials and even cooperating with NASA.
He thus produced pieces of astonishing realism, including the fish that made him famous, as well as a wide variety of vegetables and fruits.