Plates Length 10 in., Width 6 in., Depth .25 in. each. Cup Height 4 in., Width 2.75. All three pieces are signed on the undersides. This three-piece set of trompe l oeil porcelain cabbage and lettuce ware comprises two large open leaf-form plates and one cabbage cup, each hand modeled with deeply impressed vein and surface texture detail and covered in a two-tone green glaze shading from deep emerald to pale cream -- all signed by the artist Mary Kirk Kelly of Axis Alabama, whose painstaking trompe l oeil ceramics are among the most distinctive works in American studio ceramic history. Mary Kirk Kelly was born in Axis Alabama in 1918 to a family whose father owned a local brickyard working local clays -- a formative connection to the ceramic arts -- and after a distinguished academic career including a Master of Arts from Vanderbilt University and positions teaching American history and sociology at institutions including Joplin Junior College Missouri, she retired in the early 1970s and returned to Kirk House in Alabama where she gathered clay from nearby Gunnison Creek and began making ceramics full time. The decisive moment in her artistic development came when a neighbor asked her to replicate a prize cabbage he had grown -- from that commission she developed a prolific output of life-size trompe l oeil ceramic fruits, vegetables and utilitarian serving pieces of extraordinary naturalistic accuracy that attracted collectors worldwide until her death in 2013 at age 94. Her work has been acquired by collectors across the United States and appears regularly at leading American regional auction houses including Neal Auction Company, Leland Little and Ahlers and Ogletree. Condition is very good with the glaze vivid and no chips or cracks visible.