Lucie Rie
Cyril Frankel, acquired from the above, after 1989
Private collection
‘Lucie Rie: A Survey of her Life and Work’, Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, Norwich, November 1981; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 17 February-28 March 1982, item 27
‘Issey Miyake meets Lucie Rie’, Sogetsu Gallery, Tokyo, 10 May–7 June; The Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, 27 June–30 July 1989, cat. 61
‘Lucie Rie & Hans Coper: Potters in Parallel’, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 20 February–26 May 1997, cat. 11.5
John Houston, ed., Lucie Rie: A Survey of her Life and Work, exh. cat., Crafts Council and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1981, illustrated p. 51
Yoshiaki Inui, Issey Miyake Meets Lucie Rie, exh. cat., Sogetsu Gallery, Tokyo, 1989, illustrated plate 45
Thomas Hoving, 'Serene Genius', Connoisseur Magazine, November 1989, illustrated p. 146
Margot Coatts, ed., Lucie Rie & Hans Coper: Potters in Parallel, exh. cat., Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1997, illustrated p. 91
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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