Private collection, London, acquired directly from the artist, 1976
Phillips, London, "Design," September 27, 2011, lot 45
Acquired from the above by the present owner
"Issey Miyake Meets Lucie Rie," Sogetsu Gallery, Tokyo, May 10-June 7, 1989; The Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, June 27-July 30, 1989
"Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, and their pupils: a selection of contemporary ceramics illustrating their influence," Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich, October 2-December 16, 1990; The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, January 22-April 1, 1991
"Lucie Rie," Crafts Council, London, January 30-April 5, 1992
"Lucie Rie/Hans Coper," The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, November 15, 1994-May 21, 1995
"Lucie Rie Gebrannte Erde," Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna, July 14-September 12, 1999
"Gwen John & Lucie Rie," Olympia Fine Art and Antiques Fair, London, February 22-February 27, 2001
"Ceramic Modernism, Hans Coper, Lucie Rie and their legacy," Gardiner Museum, Toronto, May 25-September 2, 2002
"Hans Coper Retrospective: Innovation in 20th-Century Ceramics," The Museum of Ceramic Art, Hyogo, September 12-November 29, 2009
Yoshiaki Inui, Issey Miyake Meets Lucie Rie, exh. cat., Sogetsu Gallery, Tokyo, 1989, illustrated pp. 62, 103
John Stewart Johnson, Lucie Rie/Hans Coper: Masterworks by Two British Potters, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994, illustrated p. 14
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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