Lucie Rie
The Adventure of Pottery
13 October 2024 – 30 March 2025
To make pottery is an adventure to me. Every new work is a new beginning.
Lucie Rie, c. 1951
For the first time, Danish audiences will have the opportunity to enter the world of Lucie Rie’s ceramics. The highly respected and unorthodox Austrian-born ceramicist established herself as one of the most important British potters of the 20th century and was made a Dame in 1991.
Her work has a unique, inherent elegance and its modernist shapes, sgrafitto patterns and vibrant colours continue to impress and inspire. The exhibition features a wide range of her vases, pots and vessels – as well as a presentation of her famous ceramic buttons, which are little jewels in themselves.
While building her career as a practising ceramicist with her own workshop in London, she made a living making these unique buttons for the haute couture models of the major fashion houses.
Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery is based on an exhibition that has been shown at several venues in England, including Kettle’s Yard Art Gallery in Cambridge. At the CLAY Museum, the exhibition will be complemented by works from new private collections.
I shall never cease to be a pupil. There seems to the casual onlooker little variety in ceramic shapes and designs but to the lover of pottery there is an endless variety of the most exciting kind. And there is nothing sensational about it only a silent grandeur and quietness.
Born into a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna in 1902, Lucie Rie originally wanted to be a sculptor, but once she was introduced to the potter’s wheel at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, there was no turning back. For the rest of her life, clay was the centre of her life.
Lucie Rie had already achieved great success and won several awards for her work when Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938 and the persecution of Jews became widespread. She and her husband had to leave their lives and careers behind and flee the country. Like many other refugees, they chose to settle in London, where Lucie Rie set up her own studio at 18 Albion Mews, near Hyde Park. It was here that Lucie Rie worked tirelessly and passionately with clay for six decades until her death in 1995.
If one should ask me whether I believe myself to be a modern potter or a potter of tradition I would answer: I don’t know and I don’t care. Art alive is always modern, no matter how old or young. Art-theories has no meaning to me, beauty has.
The exhibition includes the 1982 BBC documentary in which the fiercely determined and independent woman is interviewed by acclaimed British TV personality David Attenborough in her studio at Albion Mews.
Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery is based on the original exhibition organised by Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge and MIMA, part of Teesside University, in association with The Holburne Museum, Bath. At the CLAY Museum, the exhibition is complemented by new works from private collections and has been curated by Sanne Flyvbjerg and Pia Wirnfeldt.
The exhibition at CLAY is generously supported by the British philanthropic foundation AKO Foundation.
All quotations are from The Adventure of Pottery, published by Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge.
The book can be purchased at the CLAY Museum or from the Museum’s web shop.
Lucie Rie, Bowl, 1990. Porcelain with pink glaze, inlaid lines, turquoise bands and manganese drip, 19.5 cm diameter.
Private collection. Photo: Jason Hynes/Rachel Deakin
Photographer unknown. © Estate of Lucie Rie. From the collections of the Crafts Study University for the Creative Arts, UK, RIE/20/4/7.