Georges JOUVE (1910-1964). Large deep dish in enameled ceramic with free-form polychrome decoration on a black ground. Signed Jouve and the monogram A. P. (with interlaced letters) for Apollon, a mark known as the Alpha, on the reverse. Circa 1950. Height : 8 cm - L. : 41 cm - W. : 34 cm Bibliography: Georges Jouve, à la lumière d'Apollon, C. et S. de Beyrie, 2021, similar models pp.196-201. Note : Early nicknamed Apollon by his fellow students at the Ecole Boulle for his talent, Georges Jouve began to excel in the art of ceramics in 1945, after training with ceramist Etienne Noël in Paris. He began research into the material, quickly abandoning the turned form for a technique more akin to modelling and sculpture. An adept of deep materials with sober tones, he essentially used black with a satin sheen evoking the bucchero nero of Etruscan pottery from the 12th to 5th centuries B.C. He would even go so far as to assert with Matisse that "Black is a color in itself, which sums up and consumes all the others". He turned his production towards less everyday objects, inventing abstract forms that he adorned with colorful motifs. He exhibited at the Salon des artistes décorateurs in 1949 and 1959. The La Demeure gallery represented him in Paris, and his name became known abroad thanks to numerous exhibitions.