Lucie Gomperz was born in Vienna on the 16 th March 1902. She started studying at the Kunstgewerbeschule under Michael Powolny in 1922 and had her first pots exhibited a year later at the Palais Stoclet in Brussels. In 1926 she graduated from the Kunstgewerbeschule and married Hans Rie. She won gold medals at both the Brussels International Exhibition and Milan Triennale, and a silver medal at the Paris International Exhibition for her pots from 1935 to 1937. In 1938 Lucie Rie left for England due to the political situation in Austria and first moved to Hampstead then into Albion Mews, a workshop with a limited living space, which she rented from the Church Commissioners and where she lived until her death in 1995. She met Bernard Leach in 1939 at the Little Gallery Chelsea, who proved to be a major influence on her life, both personally and professional. After divorcing her husband who had moved to the USA in 1940, Lucie Rie, encouraged by Fritz Lampl, who had a glass button business, opened her own ceramic button-making workshop where she produced pottery buttons for haute couture and jewellery. The small endeavour was closed down by the government as not essential to the war effort and was only re-opened in 1945. It was because of this workshop Lucie met Hans Coper in 1946 and took him on as assistant. Her subsequent friendship with Hans Coper proved to be the most important of her life.

Lucie was invited by Bernard Leach to the International Conference of Craftsmen at Dartington Hall in 1952, and she took Hans Coper with her, both of them displaying their work in the exhibition. It was there she met Shoji Hamada, the Japanese potter who was generally understood as being the greatest of the century. In 1960 Lucie started to teach at the Camberwell School of Art. She was also on the selection committee of the Design Council and a visiting lecturer at the Bristol College of Art. The most important joint exhibition in Lucie Rie’s career, was at the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam in 1967, together with Hans Coper. At the same time she was given the accolade of a one-man exhibition by the Arts Council held at their premises at No 4 St James Square, which travelled around Britain. In 1968, she was given the OBE. This period and the following decade were described by herself as her most important work, and she took part in many exhibitions. She continued to be an active potter until September 1990, when a serious stroke brought her career to an end. She was created a Dame in the following New Years Honours. In 1992 a very comprehensive exhibition of her life’s work was organized by the Crafts Council, which she was just able to visit. After two further strokes Lucie Rie was housebound until her death in 1995.

An almost identical bowl, exhibited at and subsequently bought by the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam, can be seen in ‘Lucie Rie’ by Tony Birks, page 130.