Hans Coper - Design London Wednesday, September 30, 2015 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    Private collection, London

  • Literature

    Tony Birks, Hans Coper, Yeovil, 1993, pp. 141-42, 157 for similar examples
    Garth Clark, The Potter's Art, London, 1995, p. 179 for a similar example
    Margot Coatts, ed., Lucie Rie & Hans Coper: Potters in Parallel, exh. cat., Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1997, p. 99 for a similar example
    Maya Nishi, ed., Hans Coper Retrospective: Innovation in 20th Century Ceramics, exh. cat., The Museum of Ceramic Art, Hyogo, 2009, pp. 67, 174 for a similar example

  • Artist Biography

    Hans Coper

    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. 

    View More Works

49

Composite form with vertical central disc

circa 1974
Stoneware, layered white porcelain slips and engobes over a body with textured and incised linear designs, the interior with manganese glaze.
26.5 x 15.6 x 7.5 cm (10 3/8 x 6 1/8 x 2 7/8 in.)
Impressed with artist's seal.

Estimate
£20,000 - 30,000 

Sold for £35,000

Contact Specialist
Madalena Horta e Costa
Head of Sale
+44 20 7318 4019

Design

London Auction 1 October 2015