Artist
Lucie Rie
Austria/Britain
Thin walls holding light. Volcanic surfaces.
She fled the Nazis with nothing but her potter's wheel—and reinvented modern ceramics.
Lucie Rie was already an established potter in Vienna when the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938. She escaped to London with her wheel and little else. For years she made ceramic buttons to survive. Then Hans Coper arrived at her studio, and everything changed. Rie's work is recognizable instantly: impossibly thin walls, delicate feet, sophisticated forms that seem to hold light. Her volcanic glazes emerged from decades of experimentation. She worked until she was nearly 90.
What could you refine over a lifetime of practice?