Lucie Rie - Design New York Thursday, June 12, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Acquired directly from the artist

  • Catalogue Essay

    The ceramics that follow are the second and final group of works to be offered from a collection which includes an important group of pieces spanning 50 years of the artist's work.  They range from one of the largest known pieces developed by Lucie Rie while she was still developing her style in pre-war Vienna right through to one of the very last pieces that she fired in 1990.  Several of the items on offer were those retained by the artist as part of her own personal collection and frequently these prized pots were also those that were lent to exhibitions.  These included the Arts Council retrospective in 1967, the Crafts Council exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Musem in 1981, “Issey Miyake meets Lucie Rie” in 1989 and the “Lucie Rie – Hans Coper, Potters in Parallel” show at the Barbican Museum and Art Gallery in 1997.  Many of these pots were also reproduced as specimen examples in Lucie Rie’s biography written by Tony Birks and first published in 1987.  In the last few years this important book has been translated and re-published in Japanese and French. 
     
    The collection was acquired after regular visits and purchases made over a period of 30 years beginning in the late 1960s.  This close relationship between artist and collector helped inform a highly developed understanding and appreciation of many of the unique qualities of her work. 

  • 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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22

Rare "Vienna Period" vase

ca. 1935
Earthenware, blue flowing glazes with a deep blue speckle coming through from the body.
11 1/4 in. (28.6 cm) high
Underside painted “L.R.G. Wien.”  

Estimate
$25,000 - 30,000 

Sold for $43,000

Design

12 June 2008, 2pm
New York