Betty Lee and Aaron Stern, New York
Phillips, New York, "The Betty Lee and Aaron Stern Collection," December 17, 2013, lot 35
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Tony Birks, Lucie Rie, Yeovil, 1994, p. 106 for a similar example
Lucie Rie: A Retrospective, exh. cat., The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 2010, p. 145 for a similar example
Austrian • 1902 - 1995
Dame 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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