Lady Lucie Rie (Vienna 1902 - 1995 London) Sgraffito shell Porcelain with manganglasur, ribbons in terracotta and turquoise, partly inside and outside with Ritzdekor and bronzierung. Exalted ligature mark LR. H 10, D 12.7 cm. Around 1970 - 78. After her escape from Vienna in 1938, the ceramic artist Lucie Rie had to start almost from scratch in London. The first years were difficult, as Rie as an Austrian had the status of "enemy alien". She secured her livelihood by building a workshop for ceramic buttons. Through her experiments with glazes, she was able to offer fashion houses colour-matched button series that met great demand. At the same time, she developed her own artistic practice. Among the early supporters of her work was the collector and gallerist Henry Rothschild, who became an important figure in the London art scene in the post-war period. In addition to Rothschild, individual galleries outside London contributed significantly to the establishment of Rie as an important ceramicist. The New Craftsman Gallery in St. Ives, founded by Janet Leach, wife of renowned ceramicist Bernard Leach and developed into one of the most important galleries for contemporary ceramics in England, played a special role. Bernard Leach was closely associated with Lucie Rie since the 1950s. In addition to works by Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada and Hans Coper, works by Lucie Rie from Austria were already offered at the opening of the gallery in 1965. The New Craftsman Gallery thus became an important distribution platform for Ries Keramiken and combined its independent artistic position with the important network of British studio ceramics. There, in the New Craftsman Gallery, the bowl offered here was purchased in 1979. She was born in a mature creative phase of the artist, in which Rie increasingly expanded her characteristic formal language and refined glaze art by adding new colours and surface effects. Although her work had already been honoured with a first large retrospective in 1967, Rie remained interested in the development of new ceramic forms of expression until his old age. Since the late 1960s, she has been experimenting with manganese oxide, whose dark metallic shimmering effect is reminiscent of melted bronze and gives her vessels an archaic and modern character at the same time. In addition, she used a bright color palette and combined it with the surface processing characteristic of her, especially the Sgraffito technique. The bowl acquired in 1979 through the New Craftsman Gallery stands as an example of this advanced phase of her work. Provenance: Acquired in 1979 at New Craftsman Gallery, St. Ives, Cornwall. Literature: See a bowl almost identical in form and decor in the cat. Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery, Cambridge 2022, p. 100. Another similar shell is used. ==References====External links== ==References==