Long Necked Vase

Long-necked Vase is a fine example of the work of studio potter Lucie Rie, and marks a pivotal point in her career. Rie was born in Vienna in 1902 and trained in ceramics at the Kunstgewerbeschule. She married Hans Rie in 1926 and exhibited her work in Paris, Milan and Brussels. After the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938, Rie emigrated to Britain and settled in London. Rie is known for her delicate, Modernist pottery influenced by Japanese forms. During the 1950s she worked on a series of cylindrical vases, but Long-necked Vase marks a turning point in which a bulbous waist appears in her work. This anticipates the bottle vases developed by Rie from the mid-1960s onwards, vessels that became her signature form. The potter achieved the effect of the brown speckles in the white glaze by adding small amounts of granular manganese dioxide to her clay. Long-necked Vase was originally owned by the watercolour painter and ceramics collector Eileen Young (1896-1986), who acquired around 70 of Rie’s pieces. It now enters the collection of the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath, where it joins work by prominent studio potters, including Rie’s friends Bernard Leach and Hans Coper.