Lucie Rie at the wheel. Image: © Jane Coper/Estate of the artist.
On offer in Moved by Beauty: Works by Lucie Rie from an Important Asian Collection are 71 lots by the great 20th-century master. Here, we take you on a tour through some of the techniques that make her great.
Form
Lucie Rie, from left: Footed bowl, circa 1976 (lot 8). Vase with flaring lip, circa 1980 (lot 6). Cylindrical vase with flaring lip, 1976 (lot 68). Vase with flaring lip, circa 1980 (lot 4). Vase with flaring lip, 1978 (lot 2). Moved by Beauty.
Lucie Rie’s work — spanning over sixty-five years, starting in Vienna before the war and continuing in London from 1938 onwards — is primarily a study on form. Despite her lengthy career, Rie often returned to the same forms throughout her life. Her conical bowls, vases with flaring lips, and delicate bell-shaped vases on a small foot are immediately recognizable as her work. The singularity of her point of view is thoroughly modern, but it should not be thought that Rie was without her influences. Rather, the heterogeneity of her influences is what makes her work so distinctive. Pulling from disparate sources for inspiration such as Roman and Mycenaean pottery, modernist architecture, and natural artifacts like bones, Rie’s vessels have an ancient solemness and austerity of ornament which speak to something essential. There are certainly hints of other twentieth-century potters, such as Bernard Leach and Hans Coper, to be found in her works. However, these influences are always fully assimilated and transformed into something uniquely her own.
Lucie Rie, Footed bowl, circa 1980 (lot 14). Moved by Beauty.
Rie’s focus on form required a supreme mastery over the wheel. The potter’s wheel is central to Rie’s process. Unlike most English potters, she preferred the European-style kick wheel over an electric wheel, which allowed her to kick directly onto a heavy flywheel at the base. This method requires the whole body to engage over the wheel. With a few kicks, the wheel takes on a life of its own, propelled into motion which is only slowed by the return of inertia. Rie not only mastered this method but went even further, often using the wheel to apply glaze and scratch in sgraffito and inlay designs. Therefore, the movement of the wheel is ever present in Rie’s work. It can be seen in the horizontal bands etched into bowls and in the thick glazes swiped on with a wide brush, all applied with a steady hand while the wheel slowly spins.
Glaze
Lucie Rie, Footed bowl, circa 1978 (lot 17). Moved by Beauty.
Ornament was typically minimal in Lucie Rie’s work but she did not abhor indulgences of color, graphic decoration, and gilded drips of manganese glaze. These touches were, instead, chosen with extreme restraint. This restraint, however, only makes each color and line more purposeful and striking. Rie preferred to apply her glazes while the clay was still in its bone-dry state, a technique known as raw-glazing, allowing the glaze and clay body to mature together during a single high-temperature firing. Vessels were left out until they were leather-hard rather than biscuit fired. Then they were returned to the wheel to be glazed. This technique required skill, as the glaze is applied with a large brush while the pot spins slowly, making it challenging to achieve an even coat. Rie overcame this by adjusting the glaze to a thick consistency and adding gum arabic to improve application. This strategy of thickening glaze in turn creates a sumptuousness which is best seen in her running glazes which run and drip down the side of the vessel only to be frozen and hardened in the firing process.
Lucie Rie, Footed bowl, circa 1980 (lot 1). Moved by Beauty.
This choice to glaze on the wheel created an unmistakable horizontal bias in her work, with broad bands of glaze enhancing the vessel’s form. Rie’s glazes were often kept simple, relying on color and texture rather than intricate designs, but their effects were complex. Brushed glazes, compared to the smoothness of dipped or poured glazes—a technique commonly favored by other potters, allow for subtle variations, giving each surface depth and texture from the glaze alone.
Sgraffito and Inlay
Lucie Rie, Rare footed bowl, circa 1982 (lot 3). Moved by Beauty.
One benefit of raw-glazing her ceramics rather than hardening them in the kiln before adding decoration, was that it allowed Lucie Rie to add further designs by cutting into the still slightly soft clay after glazing. Using a needle Rie would cut through the raw glaze to reveal the clay body beneath—a technique called sgraffito. The lines were often drawn impossibly close together in concentric circles and grids, cutting through deep richly colored glaze to review the sharp white clay body beneath.
Lucie Rie, Footed bowl, circa 1982 (lot 10). Moved by Beauty.
Another technique related to sgraffito and often seen in Rie’s work is inlay. To create an inlay effect, Rie would again draw on the leather hard clay with a needle, the brush pigment into the scratched lines, and sponge away excess material to leave glaze only within the etched line. This technique produces exceptionally sharp colored lines which could not be achieved with a brush. Reactive oxides, such as manganese, were often used in inlay lines to create a "bleeding" effect as the glaze burst from the sharp line. This effect is best exemplified in Rie’s “Knitted” bowls which display an intricate radiating diamond inlay pattern. The interaction between the glaze in the inlay and the overglaze gives the lines a homespun yarn appearance.
Spirals
Lucie Rie, from left: Vase with flaring lip, circa 1980 (lot 30). Vase with flaring lip, circa 1978 (lot 32). Vase with flaring lip, circa 1981 (lot 28). Moved by Beauty.
One of the most recognizable forms in Lucie Rie's oeuvre are her spiral vessels. These vessels are distinct for their elegant swirl which wraps around the vase or bowl moving across the surface, creating a sense of dynamic movement and flow. To achieve this effect, Rie would take two different types of clay and press the two halves together to create a mound on the wheel. As she began pulling the clay upwards as the wheel spun, the two clays would mix and spiral up the vessel. While this method existed before her, Rie was the first contemporary potter to champion this technique and use it to achieve such a graceful effect.
Lucie Rie, from left: Vase with flaring lip, circa 1972 (lot 58). Rare composite vase, circa 1980 (lot 59). Moved by Beauty.
Not only does this method demonstrate Rie’s eye for subtle decoration which feels inherent to the vessel rather than a later adornment, but it exemplifies Rie's precise control of the wheel. Throwing two types of clay can pose great difficulty as the clays may have differing levels of coarseness, malleability, and generally require different handling. It took a master at the wheel to keep the delicate balance between the different materials. Additionally, Rie employed this method to demonstrate her deep knowledge of glazes. After the vessel was thrown, a single glaze was applied to the vessel. However, due to different materials in each clay, the glaze would react differently producing brightly colored swirls. The swirl of color is not merely decorative but also emphasizes the form and structure of the vessel, guiding the viewer’s eye along its contours. These spiral designs reflect Rie's ability to blend traditional techniques with modern aesthetics, resulting in pieces that are both ancient and modern.
Discover More from Design >