Lucie Rie - Design Masters New York Tuesday, December 11, 2012 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Private collection, UK

  • Literature

    Tony Birks, Lucie Rie, Paris, 2006, pp. 82-83 for examples from the Vienna period

  • Catalogue Essay

    PQ:

    'When you handle them, they give you the feeling of homogeneity that you experience when you handle a pebble. You sense that their surface is not a thinly applied veneer of decoration but an expression of their central substance.’ Sir David Attenborough

  • 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' pot

circa 1930
Earthenware, bright orange glaze with fine black speckles.
4 3/8 in (11 cm) high, 4 7/8 in (12.6 cm) diameter
Painted with 'L. R. G./WIEN'.

Estimate
$9,000 - 14,000 

Sold for $6,250

Design Masters

11 December 2012
New York