Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery

Celebrating one of the most significant potters of the twentieth century, this major new exhibition is a rare opportunity to experience Lucie Rie's (1902-1995) ground-breaking practice across six decades. Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery will feature more than 100 works, considering afresh the singular nature of Rie’s achievement, from functional tableware to elegant bowls and vases decorated with sgraffito lines and expressive glazes. Born in Vienna, Rie’s early pots from the 1920s and 30s are infused by modernist tenets of clarity and innovation, characteristics that were to inform her artistic approach throughout her working life. In 1938 she emigrated to London to escape Nazi persecution, a watershed in her life and work. As one of a small number of independent female potters working in Britain after the war, Rie was to forge her own path at odds with prevailing trends. Her remarkable body of work, exceptional in its variety, sense of purpose, elegance and experiment, continues to astonish and inspire today. Drawn from major public and private collections, highlights of the exhibition include a 1936 tea set from her early years in Vienna, ceramic buttons made in wartime London, as well as an exquisite pink bowl adorned with delicate inlaid lines and a golden manganese drip, made in 1990 at the age of 88.

All information can be found at www.kettlesyard.co.uk/events/lucie-rie-the-adventure-of-pottery/

Bowl, Lucie Rie, 1956, Crafts Council Collection: P109. Photo: Stokes Photo Ltd.

Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery travels to Kettle’s Yard from MIMA, Middlesbrough, where it will run 10 November 2022 – 12 February 2023. The exhibition tours to The Holburne Museum, Bath, from July 2023 - January 2024. A new publication exploring Lucie Rie’s work will be published by Kettle’s Yard in February 2023.

Exhibition organised by Kettle’s Yard and MIMA. Exhibition supported by the AKO Foundation Lead Commercial Sponsor: Offer Waterman