Lot #120: Very Vintage Original Swiss - 1960 Signatured "Gustav Sporri" for Ziegler - "Arabian"

Gustav Sprri (born July 20 , 1902 in Zell am Harmersbach ; died May 29 , 1976 in Schaffhausen ) was a Swiss ceramic artist

Sprri's father was a potter who had immigrated from the Swiss Tsstal , and his mother was a local baker's daughter. The Sprri-Rauers had nine children, five of whom died during the First World War . After school, Gustav Sprri began an apprenticeship as a ceramic painter with Georg Schmider in the United Ceramic Works in Zell am Harmersbach . After the apprenticeship, further training followed at the State Majolica Manufactory in Karlsruhe with Max Laeuger , at the Dresden School of Applied Arts and at the Vienna Art Academy .In May 1934, Gustav Sprri married Liselotte Lilo Zickner (19071980). From 1932 to 1945 he worked at Villeroy & Boch in Dresden, where he rose to artistic director.  In 1946, Sprri was taken prisoner and sentenced to forced labor in Dresden, which had been heavily bombed in February 1945 and occupied by the Red Army in May. Thanks to support from Bern, the Sprri couple managed to escape to Switzerland with their eight-year-old adopted daughter Elke in 1948. Their daughter Heide was born there in the same year. Gustav Sprri worked in a pottery near Thun for a short time . He then moved to the ceramic arts department at Tonwarenfabrik Ziegler AG in Schaffhausen, where he was artistic director from 1949 to 1964. In 1951, the Sprri couple built the "Trubegetli" residential and studio building in the Urwerf district in Neuhausen am Rheinfall . There Sprri began to work independently as a ceramist and artist parallel to his work at Ziegler AG, and after leaving Ziegler he worked exclusively in his own studio. Sprri died of cancer.