3
Lucie Rie
Early and rare bowl and saucer
- Estimate
- £4,000 - 6,000‡♠
£63,000
Lot Details
Earthenware, unglazed burnished surface with dark integral speckle.
circa 1936
Bowl: 4.3 cm (1 3/4 in.) high, 14 cm (5 1/2 in.) diameter
Saucer: 1.5 cm (0 5/8 in.) high, 15.5 cm (6 1/8 in.) diameter
Saucer: 1.5 cm (0 5/8 in.) high, 15.5 cm (6 1/8 in.) diameter
Each painted L.R.G. WIEN.
Specialist
Full-Cataloguing
Catalogue Essay
'When you’re beginning to collect, and you arrive at 18 Albion Mews in London with a letter of introduction to one of the greatest ceramic artists in the world… thinking back on it, I was quite awestruck. She was very solicitous and kind, sympathetic to my interest and extremely gracious.' -J.D.
Provenance
Literature
Lucie Rie
Austrian | B. 1902 D. 1995Dame Lucie Rie studied under Michael Powolny at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna before immigrating to London in 1938. In London she started out making buttons for the fashion industry before producing austere, sparsely decorated tableware that caught the attention of modernist interior decorators. Eventually she hit her stride with the pitch-perfect footed bowls and flared vases for which she is best-known today. She worked in porcelain and stoneware, applying glaze directly to the unfired body and firing only once. She limited decoration to incised lines, subtle spirals and golden manganese lips, allowing the beauty of her thin-walled vessels to shine through. In contrast with the rustic pots of English ceramicist Bernard Leach, who is considered an heir to the Arts and Crafts movement, collectors and scholars revere Rie for creating pottery that was in dialogue with the design and architecture of European Modernism.
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