Cyril Frankel, acquired directly from the artist, 1981
Private collection
‘Issey Miyake meets Lucie Rie’, Sogetsu Gallery, Tokyo, 10 May–7 June; The Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, 27 June–30 July 1989, item 84
‘Lucie Rie & Hans Coper: Potters in Parallel’, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 20 February–26 May 1997, cat. 15.19
'Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, and Their Pupils', Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, 2 October-16 December 1990; The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 22 January-1 April 1991, item 29
Yoshiaki Inui, Issey Miyake Meets Lucie Rie, exh. cat., Sogetsu Gallery, Tokyo, 1989, illustrated plate 36, p. 114
Thomas Hoving, 'Serene Genius', Connoisseur Magazine, November 1989, illustrated pp. 148-49
Cyril Frankel, ed., Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, and Their Pupils, exh. cat., Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, 1990, p. 25
Margot Coatts, ed., Lucie Rie & Hans Coper: Potters in Parallel, exh. cat., Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1997, listed p. 148
Emmanuel Cooper, Lucie Rie: Modernist Potter, New Haven and London, 2012, illustrated plate 89
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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