580 - Dame Lucie Rie (Vienna 1902 - 1995 London)

Dame Lucie Rie (Vienna 1902 - 1995 London) A sgraffito dish Porcelain with manganese glaze, bands in terracotta and turquoise, partly with incised decoration and bronze finish on the interior and exterior. Raised conjoined mark LR. Height 10, diameter 12.7 cm. Around 1970 - 78. After fleeing Vienna in 1938, the ceramic artist Lucie Rie had to start almost from scratch in London. The first years were difficult, as Rie, as an Austrian, was classified as an “enemy alien”. She secured her livelihood by setting up a workshop producing ceramic buttons. Through her experiments with glazes, she was able to offer fashion houses colour-coordinated series of buttons, which were in great demand. At the same time, she continued to develop her own artistic practice. Among the early supporters of her work was the collector and gallerist Henry Rothschild, who became an important figure on the London art scene in the post-war period. Alongside Rothschild, individual galleries outside London also played an important role in establishing Rie as a significant ceramic artist. A particular role was played by the New Craftsman Gallery in St Ives, founded by Janet Leach, wife of the renowned ceramicist Bernard Leach, which developed into one of the leading galleries for contemporary ceramics in England. Bernard Leach had been closely associated with Lucie Rie since the 1950s. Thus, when the gallery opened in 1965, works by the Austrian-born Lucie Rie were offered alongside pieces by Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada and Hans Coper. The New Craftsman Gallery consequently became an important sales platform for Rie’s ceramics, connecting her distinctive artistic position with the influential network of British studio ceramics. It was there, at the New Craftsman Gallery, that the present bowl was acquired in 1979. It was created during a mature period of the artist’s career, when Rie increasingly expanded her characteristic formal language and sophisticated approach to glazes with new colours and surface effects. Although her work had already been recognised with a major retrospective in 1967, Rie remained interested in developing new forms of ceramic expression well into old age. From the late 1960s onwards, she increasingly experimented with manganese oxide, whose dark, metallic sheen evokes molten bronze and gives her vessels an archaic yet modern character. She also employed a vivid colour palette, combining it with her characteristic surface treatment, particularly the sgraffito technique. The bowl acquired through the New Craftsman Gallery in 1979 is an exemplary work from this advanced phase of her career. Provenance Acquired in 1979 from New Craftsman Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall. Literature Cf. a bowl almost identical in form and decoration, illustrated in the cat. Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery, Cambridge 2022, p. 100. Another comparable bowl sold at Sotheby’s London auction on 7 June 2024, lot 142.