Jane Coper, UK
Cyril Frankel, London
‘Masterworks: Lucie Rie and Hans Coper’, Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum, Royal Pump Rooms, 21 April-3 June 2001 (from collection on temporary loan, 2001-2002)
Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, Gallery 10 and the Industrial Gallery, June 2002-June 2004 (from collection on temporary loan, June 2002-June 2004)
‘Masterpieces of Studio Pottery’, Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead, 29 January-15 May 2005 (from collection on temporary loan, 26 August 2004-31 July 2007)
‘Lucie Rie & Hans Coper: Art Alive is Always Modern’, MIMA, Middlesbrough, 28 November 2008-15 February 2009 (from collection on temporary loan, 1 February 2008-21 August 2012)
Cyril Frankel, Modern Pots: Hans Coper, Lucie Rie & their Contemporaries: The Lisa Sainsbury Collection, London, 2000, p. 62, fig. 52
Tony Birks, Hans Coper, Yeovil, 2005, p. 183 for a similar example
Maya Nishi, ed., Hans Coper Retrospective: Innovation in 20th Century Ceramics, exh. cat., The Museum of Ceramic Art, Hyogo, 2009, p. 114, fig. 94, p. 178 for a similar example
German • 1920 - 1981
Hans Coper learned his craft in the London studio of Lucie Rie, having emigrated from Germany as a young Jewish engineering student in 1939. He initially assisted Rie in the studio with the ceramic buttons she made for the fashion industry, as well as ceramic tableware, but soon Coper was producing his own work. By 1951 he had received considerable recognition exhibiting his pots in the "Festival of Britain."
Coper favored compound shapes that, while simple in appearance, were in fact complex in construction. Similar to the making of Joseon Dynasty Moon Jars (Rie in fact displayed a Moon Jar in the studio), he would build his vessels by bringing several thrown forms together, for example joining bowls rim to rim. Coper eschewed glazes and preferred the textured surfaces achieved through the application of white and black slips, evoking the abraded texture of excavated vessels. This interest in ancient objects was very much in step with other modernists of his time—Coper admired Constantin Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti and his textured markings have been compared to sculptors such as William Turnbull.
In the last phase of his career, Coper reduced the scale of his work creating small "Cycladic" pots that stood on pedestals or drums, recalling the clay figures of Bronze Age Greece.
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