Lucie Rie

If Bernard Leach can be considered the founding father of the studio ceramics movement in Britain, then it is equally true that Lucie Rie shaped it into what it is today. She is credited with having introduced the influence of Modernism in to British ceramics, and the “urban” style of her work stands in distinct contrast to the wood fired country pots of Leach and his followers.

Born in Vienna in 1902, Lucie Rie (née Gompertz) was raised into a prosperous family in one of the cultural capitals of Europe, and her formative years co-incided with the development of the Viennese Secession and the Werkstätte. According to Rie’s biographer Tony Birks, “she had absorbed the early Secession/Werkstätte concept of design mothered and fathered by architecture, where everything that forms part of life, from wallpaper design to chairs and greeting cards, should relate back to architecture as its frame, and must be harmonious”.

Upon arriving in Britain in 1938, Rie’s work was initially criticised for its failure to conform to the classical ideals of Oriental pottery as advocated by the Leach school. Shortly after this though she was to establish one of the most productive friendships of ceramic history when the German émigré artist Hans Coper joined her studio. He restored Rie’s confidence in her Modernist approach and together they became an inspiration for subsequent generations of ceramicists still visible today.

[above text from "One Place to Call Home" exhibition, MIMA, 2009]