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The McClelland Collection
77
Dame Lucie Rie (Austrian/British 1902-1995)
FOOTED BOWL, c.1980
yellow glazed porcelain with manganese rim
impressed with artist’s initials at base
4½ x 6¾in. (11.43 x 17.15cm)
Provenance:
Collection of George and Maura McClelland
Literature
The Hunter Gatherer - The Collection of George and Maura McClelland, The Irish Museum of Modern Art,
Dublin, 2004, p.146 (illustrated)
In the The Hunter Gatherer publication Henry Pim, lecturer in ceramics at Dublin’s NCAD, wrote on the
McClelland Ceramics and Glass collection and describes the present work thus:
“One of my favourites in the collection is a beautiful ceramic bowl by Lucie Rie. Thrown on the potters’
wheel, it is decorated with a pale yellow glaze and has a glossy bronze-coloured rim. Rie was something
of a glaze wizard and developed wonderful surface treatments for her ceramics at a time when many
potters took the view that pots should be brown. Arriving in London as a refugee from Austria at the
start of the SecondWorldWar, Rie set up her studio there. She brought with her, a feeling for Modernism
which made her work stand out in contrast to that of her English counterparts.” (1)
Rie studied pottery from 1922 under Michael Powolny at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule school of arts
and crafts. Three years later she set up her first studio in Vienna in 1925 and exhibited the same year
at the Paris International Exhibition. She won a silver medal at the Paris International Exhibition (the
exhibition for which Pablo Picasso painted Guernica) in 1937.
In 1938, she fled Austria and emigrated to England separated from her husband Hans Rie around
this time. During the war and in subsequent years, she eked out a living making ceramic buttons
and jewellery some of which are displayed at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum along with the
reconstruction of her entire 18 Albion Mews studio where she was based for 50 years. Rie taught at
Camberwell College of Arts from 1960 until 1972.
She ceased making pottery in 1990 after suffering a series of strokes and died in London aged 93. Her
pottery is exhibited globally including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the York Art Gallery in the
UK, and Paisley Museum in Scotland.
(1) Henry Pim in The Hunter Gatherer - The Collection of George and Maura McClelland, The Irish Museum
of Modern Art, Dublin, 2004, p.144
€10000-€15000 (£8550-£12820 approx.)
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