Lucie Rie nee Gomperz. 1902-!995

 Born in Vienna in 1902 to a Jewish medical doctor, consultant to Sigmund Freud, Lucie Rie grew up in an environment steeped in the style and elegance of Viennese Modernism. She enrolled at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule in 1922 where she learnt to throw pots, and it was whilst a student that she

18, Albion  Mews
1939-1995

began to develop her in-depth scientific understanding and fascination with glazes – something which stayed with her throughout her life. Rie was establishing a name for herself in Europe, winning prizes for her work at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1937 but following the Anschluss and the union of Austria with Nazi Germany, she fled Vienna for London, an Austrian Jewish fugitive from the Nazis. She took all her pots and equipment with her and soon found a tiny studio in a narrow alley of converted garages near Marble Arch in London. Her growing reputation in Austria had vanished and she had to start again. She was declared an enemy alien and denied a licence to work so, between fire-watching and war work in an optics factory, she looked round for creative ways to support herself.

She tentatively began to make buttons, hand-moulded and made from glass and gradually prospered in her efforts to break into the clothing industry. As her fame grew, she began to sell to the fashion industry including prestigious outlets like Liberty and Harrods, which loved the bright, stylish, highly individual adornments to the relatively mundane war fashions available. Soon she was running a button workshop assisted by other refugees from Nazism; her one rule was that only English could be spoken! After the war, she immediately returned to making her beloved pots. Her methods marked her out as different: little use of water; raw glazing and single firing techniques at high temperatures; she worked glazes to the thickness of sauce, and loved accidental flaws, rejected by many practitioners but which she accentuated and incorporated.

Some of the many, many buttons
produced by
Lucie and her refugee
workshop during WW2.

The Britain that Rie had arrived into was a world away from Vienna, both socially and in terms of the artistic environment and the ceramic scene. British studio pottery was dominated by the work and writings of Bernard Leach, [an eventual friend] who looked back to the historic craft tradition or further afield to the Japanese aesthetic. Rie grappled with this very alien approach, and despite her efforts, could not divorce herself from the European and Modernist ideals that she had learned on the continent.

Hans Coper. 1920-1981

Another European emigre, Hans Coper, headed to Albion Mew

when he arrived  in London,  an

Hans Coper vase with ornamental top.

  engineering student who soon, nonetheless, became apprentice and studio assistant to Rie, eventually, establishing what was to remain a lifelong friendship with Lucie. Together they worked on stylish functional ceramics which were sold in leading department stores in London and New York. Coper became a star in his own right, re-defining the concept of studio pottery over the short period of thirty years. Their fruitful artistic relationship lasted until Coper’s death in 1981.

Rie's hands covered in clay

Just as the broader art scene in London shifted in the early 1960s, so too did Rie’s work, with the introduction of new, thick, textured glazes and by the 1970s the introduction of pinks and blues which served to emphasize the elegance of her thrown forms. Rie experimented further with glazes, pushing the boundaries with her fantastically detailed and painterly designs, and her bright and brilliant bowls topped with luscious wrinkled bronze rims many of which are reminiscent of work by Pollock or de Kooning. Unlike most other potters of the period Rie’s works were fired only once, and the glaze was applied by brush when the clay was still raw and unfired. Not only did this make economic sense with only a single firing, but resulted in surfaces, textures and colours that appeared more vivid and alive.

The unbearable lightness of being

Footed fluted elegance

Bowl using Rie's favourite sgraffito

Rie irrevocably changed the landscape of ceramics in Britain, and the works that she produced help to elevate the position of pottery to that of the fine arts, paving the way for later generations and leaving behind a rich and unrivalled ceramic legacy within the British art scene.

Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery. Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. April – June 25^th.

I knew the name but was quite unprepared for the array of tiny islands on spindly tables, of slight bowls and long-necked vases, speckled and splashed, re-shaped while wet from round to oval to fluted. The overall feeling in this Lucie Rie exhibition is one of calmness, serenity, a pale quiet beauty that draws in the observer so entirely that the world outside fades.

Lucie Rie footed bowl. 1965.

In a totally understated way, this Lucie Rie collection silently proclaims the person. Such creativity; such artistry; such quiet finesse. Several pale creations, some smooth, some porous, some like lava, some of mixed, united double clays to which she allowed free reign, seemingly float above their little display stands, almost untethered. Never have I seen before an exhibition which so clearly and calmly evokes the artist responsible. There is a video available at the exhibition, from

Prototype cups made for Wedgewood in 1963.
Sadly, not taken up by the commercial pottery firm,
deemed too complex to mass-produce.
They are seriously covetable!

  an Omnibus programme in 1982, showing Rie at the wheel and her hands and lower arms are all encased, dripping with the flowing clay she is working and she is almost becoming part of the wet clay she is forming with such concentration. Instead of the ‘L’Etat, c’est moi’ of Napoleon, the observer can almost hear the murmur of Rie’s ‘L’argile, c’est moi” or even, possibly, “La terre, c’est moi!” She was, undoubtedly, the Compleat Potter, the Exquisite Potter, an unlikely conqueror of a world title which she no doubt, never sought. Lucie was surely the most superlative potter of all time though she would never have mentioned it had she even noticed it!

Kettle's Yard, Cambridge.

There is a Rie quote in the excellent article, The God of Small Things by Ali Smith in the New Statesman 14-20 April, 2023: “The spirit of this country is a great influence. -- it is everywhere – in small things and in big things and it makes one feel very humble.” Written in 1951.

Another small miracle.

Meanwhile, Jane, Hans Coper’s wife wrote ,” It has been a huge gift to Britain that Lucie chose England as her home when forced to leave Vienna”. I do like the mutuality of hope and twinned compliment with acknowledged comfort and reward, received and given, expressed here.  Ali Smith suggests that entering the exhibition is rather like entering a still life. A perfect encapsulation of the experience.

Lucie with one of her later masterpieces.