Lucie Rie Rare Studio Pottery Rijsttafel Dish with Japanese Motif

Fine Art : Ceramics

 

Dame Lucie Rie (Austria & England 1902-1995); A rare small shallow footed dish from a Rijsttafel set with under-glaze painted Japanese character on a cream tin glazed ground; c.1956; fine stoneware with subtly decorated rim (narrow unglazed band on the outside, and dark manganese band on the inside); artist's LR seal to base; 13.5cm (5 1/4ins) diameter.

Rijsttafel (Dutch for "Rice Table") is an elaborate meal adapted by the Dutch from the Indonesian feast called nasi padang, consisting of a large number of side dishes served in small portions, accompanied by rice prepared in several different ways. This dish is one of a 16 piece set with the provenance of Lucie Rie's estate and then Bonhams. (Our particular thanks to Dr. David Saphier and Peter Highley for their help in identifying it)

Something else worthy of note about this dish is the subtle and precise way in which she decorated the rim – the manganese band is not visible from the outside and the unglazed band is not visible from the inside, which is only noticeable at close inspection.

CONDITION: In excellent condition with no damage or restoration; four small bubbles in the tin glaze (apparent as small bumps).

BIOGRAPHY: Lucie (pronounced "Lutzie") Rie was born Luzie Gomperz in Vienna, Austria, the youngest child of Benjamin Gomperz, a medical doctor who was a consultant to Sigmund Freud. She studied pottery under Michael Powolny at the Kunstgewerbeschule, the art school associated with the Wiener Werkstätte (the "Vienna Workshops), a craft workshop. She set up her first studio in Vienna in 1925. She exhibited at her first International Exhibition that year, in Paris.

In 1937 she won a silver medal at the Paris International Exhibition (the same exhibition for which Pablo Picasso painted Guernica), and in 1938 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 emigré, the Austrian physicist, Erwin Schrödinger. During and after the war, to make ends meet, she made ceramic buttons and jewellery, some of which can be seen displayed at London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

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 Matthews, who quickly taught him how to make pots on the wheel. Rie and Coper exhibited together only two years later, in 1948. He quickly became a partner in her studio, where he worked until 1958. Their friendship lasted until he died in 1981. Her small studio was at 18 Albion Mews, a former narrow street of converted stables located just meters from Hyde Park. She would invite just about anyone in for tea as late as the 1980s. Visitors who had seen photos of her studio taken in the 1940s would be amazed that every piece of furniture and pottery was in exactly the same place 40 years later.

Because of her close collaboration with Coper, and perhaps because they were both pre-war immigrants from German-speaking countries, her pottery is often associated with Coper's, but while his work tended to be sculptural and abstract, her's remained predominantly functional. Her pottery was also very different from that of Bernard Leach, a dominant figure in British studio pottery from the 1920s to the 1970s. Unlike his more rustic, Japanese-influenced pottery, her work has been described as cosmopolitan and architectural. Her pottery is displayed in collections around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She stopped making pottery in 1990, when she suffered the first of a series of strokes. She died at home on April 1, 1995, aged 93.

In 1981, Lucie Rie was made a CBE and in 1991, aged 89, she was appointed a DBE.

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Item ID: RL-6019