29. LUCIE RIE - A SPACE BETWEEN THE EARTH AND FIRE.

‘An Adventure in Pottery’ - The Holburne Museum - BATH.

Bowl, 1990, Porcelain, Private Collection.

'To make pottery is an adventure to me, every work is a new beginning', Lucie Rei.

Paper thin, feather-light, and tremulous with glazes - more like egg shells foraged from cliff top nests than robust domestic wares used by the clumsy British tea obsessed.

It is little wonder why Lucie Rei is adored as a ceramic saint around the world, especially in Japan, her fine-boned petit stature, defiant and strong, like the works on display in The Holburne Museum, Bath.

A tea service of samples made for Wedgwood testify Rei's flexibility to adapt for mass production, the powder blue cups and saucers are respectable and rule-abiding, but it is in the wildness of her iconic works, where the potter sores high above the repression of the domestic - releasing a menagerie of forms which cross over into high art.

The artist's searching for a new beginning with every ball of clay is an emotive reminder of the horror she fled from in Nazi-occupied Austria - her forms mesmerise with their mysterious simplicity and luminous, languid refusal to be tamed, or categorised - feral and magnificent - created with human hands but translated from the depths of fever dreams and nightmares. 

Bowl, 1976, Porcelain, The Anthony Shaw Collection/YorkMuseum Trust (York Art Gallery).

There is a definite sense of private ceremony within the vessels offered for observation - objects viewed like ancient discoveries where freckled surfaces are sgraffito-ed like ritualistic scarification - offerings to the Gods. A chalice, goblet, and delicate bowls with generous rims, outstretched like a falcon wing - these cups are for the lips of deities to drink deeply. Saturn ringed and haloed with gold, distinctly womanly and warningly self-possessed.

A sprouting of glistening discs presented in neatly glazed rows is a sample of the potter's early years fashioning fastenings for the tightly buttoned London couturiers whom she supplied. At peak production, Rei’s Paddington muse house pottery created 60,000 buttons per month, and the artifacts on display within this poised exhibition are beautiful metaphorical objects - which testify to her lifelong focus of form following function and for simplicity being the highest form of sophistication.

Tea Service c.1936. Earthenware with unglazed burnished surface. Victoria and Albert Museum.

Lucie Rie - An Adventure in Pottery The Holburne Museum BATH. Until 7 January 2024.

Thank you: Emma Morris.