Lucie Rie - Design London Tuesday, September 19, 2017 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    Betty Lee and Aaron Stern, New York
    Phillips, New York, 'The Betty Lee and Aaron Stern Collection', 17 December 2013, lot 12
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Literature

    Issey Miyake Meets Lucie Rie, exh. cat., Sogetsu Gallery, Tokyo, 1989, pp. 43, 114, no. 83 for a similar example
    Tony Birks, Lucie Rie, Yeovil, 1994, p. 213

  • 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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4

Flaring footed bowl

circa 1980
Porcelain, golden manganese glaze with concentric bands of inlay and sgraffito.
11.7 cm (4 5/8 in.) high, 25.1 cm (9 7/8 in.) diameter
Impressed with artist’s seal.

Estimate
£40,000 - 60,000 

Sold for £60,000

Contact Specialist
Sofia Sayn-Wittgenstein
Specialist
+44 207 901 7926

Design

London Auction 20 September 2017