This vintage vase by Gillian Broinowski is a rare find for collectors of contemporary art pottery. Made in Australia in the late 20th century, the vase is handcrafted from clay and finished with a beautiful glaze in black, brown, and tan tones. Measuring 11 x 7.5cm, it is the perfect size for displaying a small bouquet of flowers or as a standalone piece.

This original, studio-crafted vase is in perfect condition and bears an impressed backstamp to the side of the vessel,

A true collector's item, it is a one-of-a-kind piece that will add a touch of sophistication to any home decor. Don't miss your chance to own this unique and highly sought-after artists work this is a piece of Australian art pottery that rarely comes to market.

Below is a very good story about Gillian written  Tony Stephens

Life was a work of art for sculptor and potter

November 20, 2008 — 11.00am

GILLIAN BROINOWSKI is most widely remembered as a potter and sculptor. Yet, for her, almost everything in life was a work of art.

In keeping with her energetic, effervescent, gregarious and often spontaneous approach to living, even something as simple as having a picnic was an occasion for a celebration of life. Out would come her beautiful handmade plates and Japanese print cloths. Occasionally, even well into adulthood, she would entertain friends with an impromptu dance, a whirling, spinning solo.

Gillian Broinowski, who has died at 74, was born in Sydney to Harold Broinowski, a teacher at Shore, and his wife, formerly Julie Boazeman, a primary school teacher. Gracius Broinowski, an ornithologist, was the first of that name in Australia, arriving in the 1850s from Vielun in Poland, and having seven children.

Julie Broinowski, Gillian's mother, ran a progressive school, Fairfield, in Bellevue Hill. Gillian was educated at Fairfield, then Frensham, before travelling overseas where she met Baron Axel Von Rappe, a Swedish count.

Back in Australia she worked at Scandinavia House, a shop specialising in Swedish-designed timber furniture in Double Bay. In 1962 she married Von Rappe, who had worked with Marion Hall Best, the designer and decorator. Together the newlyweds ran Scandinavia House, before going to live in Sweden. Gillian came back without the baron and they were divorced.

Broinowski continued her studies from 1964 at East Sydney Tech, focusing on ceramics. She worked with Peter Rushforth, who had survived the Burma "death railway" as a prisoner of the Japanese in World War II. She had a close friendship with another potter, Les Blakeborough, in 1967. In 1968, she spent six months in Japan in the workshop of Kanjiro Kawai and touring other potteries. Broinowski established her pottery in the Old Dairy at Camden Park, NSW, in 1970. In 1972 she started sharing her workshop and life with Neil Whitford and, from 1975 to 1984, they lived in an old stone farmhouse at Dalgety, near the Snowy Mountains. They set up a kiln, restored the house and fired their pots, making functional beauty out of everything around them, including the two-seat outside lavatory.

In 1985 they moved to Vielun Park, the dairy property near Cobbitty owned by her uncle, John Broinowski. They lived temporarily in a chicken shed while Whitford built a Japan-inspired house and pottery studio. This was to be Broinowski's home until this year.

She returned with Whitford to Japan in 1985, when Alison Broinowski, cultural attache in the Australian embassy in Tokyo, helped them contact potters in Shigaraki. In Kyoto, Whitford collected Japanese carpenters' tools for the house at Cobbitty. Back in Australia, the couple became associated with the Sydney Buddhist Centre. After Whitford became Dh Khemadhamma, an ordained member of the western Buddhist order, in 1994, he continued to work at Cobbitty, but the centre made increasing demands on his time.

Perhaps influenced by ideas from the centre, Broinowski's work took a new direction that won praise from critics and increasing interest from galleries and the Australia Council. She exhibited her work at various galleries around Australia and at the Creative Australia Exhibition in Osaka and the Celebrate Australia Exhibition in Tokyo.

While she still made functional stoneware, particularly the square and oblong plates in earth colours that were her trademark, her work became more daring. She seemed to be sending up the disciplined vases, jugs and teaware that Rushforth had taught her to make. Jim Nelson, a Tasmanian potter, writer and environmentalist, calls her later, sculptural work "an intriguing celebration of functional pottery forms". He said her contribution was unique, providing "an added richness to the ceramic genre".

Broinowski herself said that, after many years of making functional pottery as "a way of life" and two influential visits to Japan, she found a strong sense of play emerging in her work, changing its character completely. She discovered ways of seeing familiar objects differently. "My work is in fact sculptural expressions about pots," she said.

Her sense of fun and energy, her sweet nature touched with feistiness, endured even after she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2000. A tiny redhead, she seemed to shrink a little; her hair faded to white. She could not accept a ceramics fellowship that would take her to France, but lived at Cobbitty until a few months ago.

Not long before moving, she had a surprise visit from Axel Von Rappe. They continued to write and phone each other, and he wrote a poem from Sweden that was read at her funeral celebration.

Tony Stephens