Hans Coper - Design New York Wednesday, June 9, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Sotheby’s, Decorative Arts: Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Art Pottery and Studio Ceramics, London, July 1983, Lot 318

  • Literature

    Margot Coatts, Lucie Rie and Hans Coper - Potters in Parallel, exh. cat., The Barbican Gallery, London, 1997, p. 89, item 10.15 for a similar example; Tony Birks, Hans Coper, French edition, Vendin le Vieil, 2006, p. 70  and p. 166 for similar examples; Hans Coper Retrospective – Innovation in 20th Century Ceramics, exh. cat., Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, 2009, p. 99, item 70 for a similar example

  • Artist Biography

    Hans Coper

    German • 1920 - 1981

    Hans Coper learned his craft in the London studio of Lucie Rie, having emigrated from Germany as a young Jewish engineering student in 1939. He initially assisted Rie in the studio with the ceramic buttons she made for the fashion industry, as well as ceramic tableware, but soon Coper was producing his own work. By 1951 he had received considerable recognition exhibiting his pots in the "Festival of Britain." 

     

    Coper favored compound shapes that, while simple in appearance, were in fact complex in construction. Similar to the making of Joseon Dynasty Moon Jars (Rie in fact displayed a Moon Jar in the studio), he would build his vessels by bringing several thrown forms together, for example joining bowls rim to rim. Coper eschewed glazes and preferred the textured surfaces achieved through the application of white and black slips, evoking the abraded texture of excavated vessels. This interest in ancient objects was very much in step with other modernists of his time—Coper admired Constantin Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti and his textured markings have been compared to sculptors such as William Turnbull.

     

    In the last phase of his career, Coper reduced the scale of his work creating small "Cycladic" pots that stood on pedestals or drums, recalling the clay figures of Bronze Age Greece. 

    View More Works

75

Monumental sack pot with disc

ca. 1974
T-material, porcelain slip and manganese glaze inlaid into the textured body.
17 3/8 in. (44.1 cm.) high.
Impressed with artist’s seal.

Estimate
$50,000 - 70,000 

Sold for $74,500

Design

9 June 2010
New York