Lucie Rie - Design London Wednesday, April 25, 2012 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Bonhams, Contemporary Ceramics, London, 14 November 1990, lot 182

  • Literature

    Issey Miyake meets Lucie Rie, Tokyo 1989 pp. 16-17 for similar bowls
    Fukiko Yokoyama and Shigeru Akimoto, Hyakumi Saisai, Tokyo, 1999 p. 75 for a similar bowl

  • 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.

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42

Rare oval bowl

circa 1980
Stoneware, white pitted glaze with manganese speckle.
15.8 cm (6 1/4 in) high, 24.7 cm (9 3/4 in) width
Impressed with artist’s seal. Together with a copy of the purchase invoice from Bonhams Auctioneers.

Estimate
£8,000 - 12,000 ‡♠

Sold for £21,250

Design

26 April 2012
London