Lucie Rie - Design London Monday, September 26, 2011 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • Provenance

    Liberty, London, 1980

  • Exhibited

    ‘Issey Miyake meets Lucie Rie’, Sogetsu Gallery, Tokyo, 10 May–7 June 1989 and The Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, 27 June–30 July 1989; ‘Lucie
    Rie, Hans Coper, and their pupils: a selection of contemporary ceramics illustrating their influence’, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich,
    2 October–16 December 1990 and The Fitzwilliam Museum, Adeane Gallery, Cambridge, 22 January–1 April 1991; ‘Lucie Rie’, Crafts Council, London, 30 January–
    5 April 1992; ‘Lucie Rie and Hans Coper: Masterworks by two British Potters’, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 15 November 1994–21 May 1995; ‘Gwen
    John & Lucie Rie’, Olympia, London, 22–27 February 2001; ‘Lucie Rie & Hans Coper: Potters in Parallel’, Barbican Art Gallery, London, February–May 1997; ‘Hans Coper
    Retrospective: Innovation in 20th-Century Ceramics’, The Museum of Ceramic Art, Hyogo, 12 September–29 November 2009, then travelled to: The Shigaraki Ceramic
    Cultural Park, Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, Shiga (13 March–17 June 2010), Panasonic Electric Works, Shiodome Museum, Tokyo (26 June–5 September
    2010), Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu (18 September– 23 November 2010), Iwate Museum of Art, Iwate (4 December 2010–13 February 2011), and Shizuoka City
    Museum of Art, Shizuoka (9 April–26 June 2011)

  • Literature

    Issey Miyake meets Lucie Rie, exh. cat., Sogetsu Gallery, Tokyo and The Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka,
    1989, illustrated p.53 and p. 104, fig. 43; Derek Gillman, et al., Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, and their pupils: A
    selection of contemporary ceramics illustrating their influence
    , exh. cat., Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts,
    Norwich, 1990, illustrated p. 34; Tony Birks, Lucie Rie, Somerset, 2004, illustrated p. 79; Maya Nishi, ed., Hans
    Coper Retrospective: Innovation in 20th Century Ceramics
    , exh. cat., The Museum of Ceramic Art, Hyogo, et al.,
    2009, illustrated p. 136, fig. 130 and p. 180

  • Catalogue Essay

    This magnificent design was first produced by Lucie in 1967.
    Initially only two examples were made and they were immediately
    exhibited at the Arts Council retrospective exhibition in the UK
    and at the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in the Netherlands.
    In preparation for her 1980 selling exhibition at Liberty in London,
    Lucie revisited the design, modifying the surface and glazes
    slightly, which resulted in the present example, the third and last of
    its type. Because of the limited space in Albion Mews, Lucie used a
    compact electric chest kiln for all firings after 1948, and the size of
    this kiln necessarily determined the scale of the pots she was able
    to produce. This famous pot is one of the largest known examples of
    her work to have been produced using this kiln.

  • Artist Biography

    Lucie Rie

    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.

    View More Works

42

Monumental vase

c. 1980
Stoneware, pitted blue and white flowing glaze.
56.2 cm (22 1/8 in) high
Impressed with artist's seal.

Estimate
£20,000 - 30,000 

Sold for £34,850

Design

27 September 2011
London