Large and attractive Doulton Faience vase in the Aesthetic Movement style by Mary M Arding c1880. Footed broad baluster-form body with elongated collar neck and everted rim. Hand painted panels of wild rose against a sky-blue ground, bordered in golden-yellow around the body - each panel with a different arrangement. Similar panel to neck. Decorative geometric pattern between panels on a dark amber ground. Unusually marked with impressed Doulton mark and painted Lambeth mark. Painted monograms M.M.A. for Mary M Arding and unknown assistant's mark. The vase measures 32.5 cm in height.
 
Doulton Lambeth launched its Faience wares in 1873 as a revival of painted majolica. However unlike majolica, Doulton Faience was decorated on a biscuit (once-fired) body. Pieces were then fired again after being decorated and fired a third time after glazing. Colours and glaze would expand and contract at different rates leading to the crazing that is now almost always associated with Doulton Faience. Decoration called for confident brushwork because of the porous nature of biscuit bodies as well as good knowledge of coloured oxides used (many of which changed completely in colour when fired). Because of this the artists (often accomplished in their own right) tended to specialise solely in Faience. The technique leaded itself to naturalistic representations (commonly of flowers and foliage) but also to figural Art Nouveau designs popular in the early 1900s. Output of Doulton Faience dwindled after c1910 and was discontinued during the early part of WWI.
Mary M Arding worked at Doulton as a Faience artist from 1878 to 1883. She had previously worked as a ceramic decorator at the Minton Art Pottery studio.