Widely regarded as one of the most important ceramic artists working in the post-war period Lucie Rie arrived in the UK during the late 1930s as a refugee fleeing Nazi persecution in their homelands of Austria. Already established as a potter before her arrival in London Rie set up her workshop beneath her living quarters in Albion Mews, near Marble Arch in London.

Her 'once-fired' technique was developed in an attempt to minimise the inevitable casualties incurred whilst transporting her fragile un-fired pots between her workshop and kiln across the cobbled streets of 1930s Vienna in her bicycle basket. From these earliest experiments in high Modernist aesthetic through to the very last pots that she produced at the end of the 1980s there is a constant, during the firing the body and glaze are in lively conversation with each other, mineral elements mixed into the clay burst through the glazed surface during the firing to create pitting, flashes of colour and other pleasing effects. Glaze inlaid into marks incised by hand reveals itself, sometimes blending and flowing in combination with contrasting layers of glaze above and reacting to the body beneath, the drama petrified at the end of the process. The 'knitted' bowl takes this conversation between body and glaze to an extreme conclusion, the surface is almost entirely inlaid, allowing a richness and depth to the glaze and an integration with the body unusual even in Rie's work.