Hans Coper - Lucie Rie and Hans Coper, Exceptional Ceramics: Selections from the Estate of Jane Coper and the former Collection of Cyril Frankel London Wednesday, November 1, 2023 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Lucie Rie
    Jane Coper, circa 1995

  • Exhibited

    ‘Hans Coper, 1920-1981 - Memorial Collection’, Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, Norwich, January–19 September 1983; Hetjens Museum (Deutsches Keramikmuseum), Düsseldorf, 15 January–18 March; Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, 1 April–20 May; Serpentine Gallery, London, 7 June–15 July 1984
    ‘Lucie Rie & Hans Coper: Potters in Parallel’, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 20 February–26 May 1997, item 14.3

  • Literature

    Margot Coatts, ed., Lucie Rie & Hans Coper: Potters in Parallel, exh. cat., Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1997, illustrated p. 107
    Emmanuel Cooper, Lucie Rie: Modernist Potter, New Haven and London, 2012, illustrated plate 108

  • 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. 

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Property from the Estate of Jane Coper

344

Small bottle with disc top

circa 1965
Stoneware, black glaze over a textured and incised body.
12 x 9 x 9 cm (4 3/4 x 3 1/2 x 3 1/2 in.)
Impressed with artist's seal.

Estimate
£15,000 - 20,000 

Sold for £38,100

Contact Specialist

Antonia King
Head of Sale, Design
+44 20 7901 7944
Antonia.King@phillips.com
 

Lucie Rie and Hans Coper, Exceptional Ceramics: Selections from the Estate of Jane Coper and the former Collection of Cyril Frankel

London Auction 1 November 2023