Throughout 1949 Pablo Picasso was working obsessively at the Madoura ceramics workshop in Vallauris, a short drive inland from his family home in Golfe Juan on the south coast of France. Here he approached ceramics not as decorative craft, but as a fully fledged artistic medium – part painting, part printmaking, part sculpture. It was during this pioneering period that he produced Corrida Verte (earthenware plate, edition of 500), produced at the Madoura atelier, an example of which will come to auction at Gorringe’s in their forthcoming Art & Design Post 1880 sale on March 24 (estimate £5,000–£8,000). The subject matter was typical of the time: bullfighting. As ever, he was missing his native Spain.
The market for Picasso ceramics showed exceptional strength in 2025, and the expectation is that prices will continue to rise in 2026. Yet compared with the other genres he explored, his ceramic works remain comparatively accessible, especially when major Picasso paintings can command £5 million to well over £100 million at auction. In the same Gorringe’s sale is another example of his Madoura work, produced in 1963, entitled Motifs No 7, from an edition of 150, estimated at £4,000–£6,000.
Picasso was not alone in elevating ceramics to fine art. Post-war artists including Marc Chagall, Joan Miró and John Piper also explored, and thus legitimised the medium. In recent decades, museums have increasingly collected and exhibited ceramics, raising their profile and prestige – and where institutions lead, collectors follow.
Cross-category collectors are now driving demand. Those interested in Modern British art, post-war European painting, studio pottery, or design objects might mix works by Lucie Rie, Duncan Grant, and Picasso on the same shelf. Ceramics offer collectors a relatively accessible point of entry into blue-chip names, where controlled editions, institutional recognition and strong provenance can materially support long-term value.
As Gorringe’s director Oliver Searle tells us: “We’ve found that demand for 20th-century ceramics has strengthened as collectors increasingly recognise studio pottery as fine art rather than simply decorative craft. Makers like Bernard Leach, Lucie Rie, Hans Coper and Quentin Bell – alongside artist-ceramicists such as Edmund de Waal, Elisabeth Fritsch and Magdalene Odundo – are prized for rarity, innovation and historical importance. Ceramics by major artists better known in other media also offer a more accessible entry point into collecting ‘big names’. Auction houses remain ideal hunting grounds, combining fresh-to-market private collections, transparent pricing through bidding, and the reassurance of specialist expertise.”
In the same sale Gorringe’s are bringing to auction a John Piper plate, Chepstow, after G.W. Manby (1802), from the series Whiskered Ruins: Castles of Gwent, Glamorgan and Powys (in keeping with our Romantic theme), estimated at a very affordable £1,000–£2,000. The plate has interesting provenance: it was in the collection of Quentin Bell, very possibly a gift from one artist to the other.
In ROSA #15 we featured Gorringe’s sale of an exciting study in oils for the Christ in Glory mural on display in Berwick Church, which was estimated at £15,000 to £25,000 and sold for £25,000 (including fees). It will be intriguing to see if the Picasso and Piper plates, representing smart, entry-level access to iconic names, go further and exceed expectations. As ever, watch this space.