Dame Lucie Rie Original Vintage Signed British Art Studio Pottery Vase Rich Buff Matte White Barium Blue Copper Manganese Glaze Stoneware
Lucie Rie, (1902-1995); a British pottery artist, was born as Lucie Gomperz, in Vienna, Austria, near Hungary. The youngest child of Benjamin Gomperz, a Jewish medical doctor, who was a consultant to Sigmund Freud. She had two brothers, Paul and Teddy. Paul was killed at the Italian Front, in 1917.
She studied pottery under Michael Powolny, at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule, a school of arts and crafts, associated with the Wiener Wekstatte; (the "Vienna Workshops"). She set up her first studio in Vienna in 1925, and exhibited the same year, at the Paris International Exhibition.
In 1937, she won a silver medal at the Paris International Exhibition.
In 1938, she fled Nazi Austria and emigrated to England, where she settled in London. Around this time she separated from Hans Rie; a businessman whom she had married in Vienna. For a time she provided accommodation to another Austrian émigré; the physicist Erwin Schrodinger. During and after the war, to make ends meet, she made ceramic buttons and jewelery, some of which are displayed at London's Victoria and Albert Museum; and as part of the Lisa Sainsbury Collection at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich.
In 1946, she hired Hans Coper; a young man with no experience in ceramics, to help her fire the buttons. Although Coper was interested in learning sculpture, she sent him to a potter named Heber Mathews, who taught him how to make pots on the wheel. Rie and Coper exhibited together in 1948. Coper became a partner in Rie's studio, where he remained until 1958. Their friendship lasted until Coper's death, in 1981.
Rie's small studio was at 18 Albion Mews, a narrow street of converted stables, near Hyde Park. She invited many people to her studio, and was renowned for giving her visitors tea and cake. The studio remained almost unchanged during the 50 years she occupied it; and has been reconstructed in the Victoria and Albert Museum's ceramics gallery.
Rie was a friend of Bernard Leach, one of the leading figures in British studio pottery in the mid-20th century, and she was impressed by his views, especially concerning the "completeness" of a pot. But despite his transient influence, her brightly coloured, delicate, modernist pottery stands apart from Leach's subdued, rustic, oriental work. She taught at Camberwell College of Arts from 1960, until 1972. In 1969, Lucie Rie received an Honorary doctorate, from the Royal College of Arts.
Lucie Rie
Original Vintage Glazed and Decorated Stoneware Vase
Rich Buff Matte Eggshell White, Barium Baby Blue, and Metallic Brown Manganese Glaze Decoration
Approximately 1981
Hand Signed on the Bottom
Vase is in mint/excellent original condition. However, at one time there was a lid for this vase, that is no longer with the vase/available.
Approximate Measurements are 4.5X3.5", with a 11" Circumference, around, at the widest point in the middle.
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