1. Lucie Rie is known for her extensive technical knowledge, her meticulously detailed experimentation with glazes and with firing and her unusual decorative techniques.
22 Facts About Lucie Rie
1. 2.
Lucie Rie had two brothers, Paul Gomperz and Teddy Gomperz.
3.
Lucie Rie studied pottery under Michael Powolny at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule, a school of arts and crafts associated with the Wiener Werkstatte, in which she enrolled in 1922.
4.
Lucie Rie was first inspired by her uncle's Roman pottery collection which had been excavated from the suburbs of Vienna.
5.
Lucie Rie set up her first studio in Vienna in 1925 and exhibited the same year at the Paris International Exhibition.
6.
Lucie Rie was influenced by Neoclassicism, Jugendstil, modernism, and Japonism.
7.
In 1937, Lucie Rie won a silver medal at the Paris International Exhibition.
8.
In 1938, Lucie Rie fled Nazi Austria and emigrated to England, where she settled in a small mews house in London where she lived and had her studio for the rest of her life.
9.
In 1946, Lucie Rie hired Hans Coper, a fellow emigre, a young man with no experience in ceramics, to help her fire the buttons.
10.
Lucie Rie invited many people to her studio and was renowned for giving her visitors tea and cake.
11.
Lucie 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.
12.
Lucie Rie taught at Camberwell College of Arts from 1960 until 1972.
13.
Lucie Rie received several awards for her work and exhibited with great success.
14.
Lucie Rie was interviewed in 1982 in her studio by David Attenborough, a great admirer of her work.
15.
Lucie Rie stopped making pottery in 1990, when she suffered the first of a series of strokes.
16.
Lucie Rie died at home in London on 1 April 1995, aged 93.
17.
Lucie Rie is best remembered for her bowl and bottle forms.
18.
Lucie Rie's pottery is displayed in collections around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the York Art Gallery in the UK, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, and Paisley Museum in Scotland.
19.
Lucie Rie influenced many during her 60 year career and developed very inventive kiln processing.
20.
Lucie Rie's studio was moved and reconstructed in the new ceramics gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum opened in 2009.
21.
Lucie Rie was awarded the title of Dame Commander after teaching at the Camberwell School of Art from 1960 until 1971.
22.
In 2023, a major exhibition of Lucie Rie's work was held at the Holburne Museum in Bath, over 100 items representing sixty years of her work from early pieces made in Vienna on to a raspberry coloured bowl made when she was 88.