This Unassuming 20th Century Ceramicist brought in $3 Million Dollars at Auction
Should a bowl cost more than a house? When the potter is Lucie Rie, the answer is yes. The Viennese master ceramicist who revolutionized pottery in post-war London, where she moved to escape the Nazis during World War II, went on to become one of the most critically acclaimed and financially successful potters in British history. Yesterday, an auction of her vessels at Phillips Auction House, spanning 30 years of the ceramicist's career, from an important private collection in Asia, grossed a total of $3,237,865 with not a single lot left available.
The sale was the first comprehensive auction dedicated to Rie’s work in the United States. The highest lot of the sale, a white footed porcelain bowl with blue concentric lines likely made in 1978, claimed $422,910, the second highest price one of her works has ever achieved at auction. “The results, combined with bidding participation from more than 20 countries, only reinforces the notion of Rie’s enduring international appeal and the strength of ceramics in the design landscape,” says Benjamin Green, a Phillips design specialist.
Rie was an expert ceramicist as well as a potter to the people; A pragmatist as well as a dreamer. She not only made the fine vessels available in the auction, but teapots, plates, cups, bowls and even buttons for daily use, sold through British department stores. While her peers like Bernard Leech and Hans Coper were making forceful, bulky vessels with generous bases and thick walls, Rie was more interested in crafting fine, thin-walled bowls and vases with delicate feet, long necks, fluted bodies, and wildly inventive surface decoration.
Throughout her decades-long career she constantly pushed herself technically, experimenting with different glazes (almost all of which she mixed herself), clay recipes that produced different textural effects in the kiln, and hand drawn decoration like the sgraffito stripes, checks, and the grid patterns she’s most famous for. Her color choices are enchanting, never loud, with mottled moss greens paired with chocolate or soft petal pinks paired with turquoise bands.
The 71 vessels on offer display the full breadth of Rie’s mastery of the wheel. Some of the bowls sold are so thin you can shine a light through them, and yet they have survived unmolested for decades; some bowls are rimmed in copper, gently shining and dripping in the natural light; some of her vases balance impossibly long necks on rotund bodies. Many of the works feature delicate, steady lines that Rie was known to make with machine-like precision. Her hand was steady and dedicated, often tracing lines on her pots with machine-like precision, but the final result was always infused with the spark of human ingenuity that marks a great artist. It’s no surprise her work has held it’s value, and the results from yesterday’s sale prove she will be a hotly sought after artist for centuries to come.
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