Lucie Rie (Austrian/British 1902-1995)

Lucie Rie was born in Vienna in 1902. From an early age she was immersed in the intellectual and artistic environment of early 20th century European modernism. She learnt her craft at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule, a school associated with the famous Wiener Werkstätte, and had already made a name for herself on the continent in the 1920s and 30s before the 1937 Anchluss with Nazi Germany forced Rie and her husband to flee to Britain.

"To make pottery is an adventure to me, every new work is a new beginning."

Lucie Rie, cited in the Introduction to Lucie Rie, The Adventure of Pottery, Exhibition Catalogue, Kettles Yard, 2023

The artistic climate of late 1930s London was far removed from the sophisticated and elegant city that she had left. Her reputation which was wide-reaching in Europe, did not extend beyond a few admirers. Unable to get a licence to produce pots during the war, she made ends meet by producing ceramic buttons and jewellery for high end fashion retailers. The immediate post-war years saw her work hard to re-establish herself as a potter of note. Unlike many of her British contemporaries who looked into the past for their inspiration, Rie’s style was relentlessly modern and experimental, a quality that would permeate her work for the rest of her life.

The three works presented in this sale all date from 1978-1980. Although already in her late 70s, Rie was still at the height of her creative powers and all three works demonstrate her unique method of applying glazes. Right from the beginning of her career in Austria, she seems to have taken an unusual approach to the process. Rie applied her glazes by brush directly to the dry and unfired clay with the resulting work only requiring firing once and thus excluding the usual biscuit-firing prior to glazing, employed by most potters of the period. As Nigel Wood explains in his essay in the exhibition catalogue that accompanies the current exhibition of her work at Kettles Yard (p. 210), the process had certain advantages that appealed to Rie:

‘Using a system that allowed glazing and firing to follow closely on throwing and turning made production faster, the fired results more quickly assessed, and the new ideas more easily developed. For a potter who experimented constantly through her working life this was a significant advantage.’

The ability to apply glazes directly gave Rie enormous artistic freedom, allowing her to manipulate the texture and surface of the vessel to push the boundaries of what was possible. The vibrant blues, yellows and pinks employed by Rie accentuate the sophistication and beauty of her designs. As a woman working on her own, she forged an independent path, producing works that were uniquely her own. She left what is arguably one of the most important bodies of work in the field of studio ceramics and a legacy of innovation which resonated throughout the wider artistic world.

John Ward (British 1938-2023)

At the age of 28 John Ward applied to Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts. He was initially drawn to this particular college as he knew that Lucie Rie and Hans Coper were visiting tutors and after having seen their works at pottery exhibitions in London he was keen to learn more. Ward said, ‘Lucie Rie’s work, which I first saw in a sunlit exhibition room, glowed with its light, life and colour.’

"Clay is a marvellous material to work with and get to know; it inspires creation."

~ John Ward

Ward’s life in metropolitan London certainly paved the way for his career in ceramics but it was his move to Pembrokeshire with his family in 1979 which allowed him to take up a slower pace of life, surrounded by serenity and nature. Ward was inspired by the sudden change in colours he witnessed from the city to the coast. The monumental rock formations teetering on the edge of cliffs reiterated the energy and power of nature. His fascination with light and the way in which it fell through the trees making shapes and patterns on the woodland floor were certainly all influential in the development of both his design and form. He hand-built his pots using strips of clay to build vessels of design over function. Cutting and re-joining sections of clay resulted in beautiful unique forms, experimenting also with textured surfaces. The works he created drew inspiration from architectural design, nature’s elements found on the shoreline and historic roman vessels.

In 1982, John Ward had his first one-man show at the Peter Dingley Gallery. This exhilarating body of work showcased his wide variety of new forms, including gourd-shaped vessels, double-grooved bowls, square necks and flanged bowls. Ward set himself off on a journey to find ‘rightness’ which to him was the perfect balance between form, achieved through quality of clay, and decoration, through the experimentation of glazes. In this private collection of works by John Ward we are able to identify examples of many of his favourite glazes including three green and white pots with geometric glazes, striking black, tantalising blue and innocent white, like porcelain.

"Ward was fascinated by the self-containment of a single vessel combined with the dynamism of design which created an object full of energy and yet ‘a still point of the turning world."

John Ward, Emma Crichton-Miller, The Pottery of John Ward, p. 12

Important examples of Ward’s ceramics can be found in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. We are pleased to be offering twelve works in this auction (Lots 62-73), alongside works by Janet Leach, David Roberts, and Beate Andersen, all from the same private collection.

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Auction Details

Tuesday 11 July 2023 | 1pm BST
Donnington Priory, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2JE

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