Lucie Rie - Design London Wednesday, November 2, 2022 | Phillips

Design

London Auction 2 November 2022

  • Provenance

    Private collection, New York
    Phillips, New York, 'Design', 25 May 2011, lot 3
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Literature

    John Houston, ed., Lucie Rie: a Survey of her Life and Work, exh. cat., Crafts Council and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1981, p. 88 for a similar example

  • 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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67

Lucie Rie

Footed bowl

circa 1978
Porcelain, golden manganese, terracotta and turquoise glazes, two bands of vertical sgraffito lines repeated inside and out.
10 cm (3 7/8 in.) high, 15.3 cm (6 in.) diameter
Underside impressed with artist's seal.

Estimate
£40,000 - 60,000 ‡♠

Sold for £176,400

Contact Specialist

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

Design

London Auction 2 November 2022