Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery – Clay Museum of Ceramic Art, Denmark

Look forward to our upcoming exhibitions:

Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery
13 October 2024 – 30 March 2025

Press release

Lucie Rie at CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art, Denmark: A NEW ADVENTURE OF CERAMICS

It’s quite true – and quite an adventure – that the CLAY Museum can now unveil this autumn’s major international exhibition Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery.

According to Pia Wirnfeldt, director at CLAY, the Austrian – English ceramicist Lucie Rie (1902-1995) is one of the top four most influential ceramicists in England in the 20th  century.

Lucie Rie was born in Vienna, where she studied ceramics at the Kunstgewerbeschule from 1922-26. In 1937, she won a silver medal at the International Exhibition in  Paris, but the following year she moved to London because of the persecution of Jews following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany.

While Lucie Rie built her career as a practising ceramicist with her own workshop in London, she made her living making unique ceramic buttons for the haute couture models of major fashion houses. These buttons are little jewels in themselves, and her studio ceramics have a particular elegance with their modernist shapes, sgrafitto patterns and vibrant colours.

‘Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery’ is based on the original exhibition organised by Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge and MIMA, part of Teesside University, in association with The Holburne Museum, Bath. At CLAY Museum, the exhibition will be complemented by works from new private collections, making it not only the first Danish presentation of the Anglo-Austrian ceramicist’s life’s work. It will also be the largest comprehensive exhibition of her ceramic work to date, spanning six decades. This has been made possible thanks to the support of many lenders, a close collaboration with Kettle’s Yard and, not least, a generous grant from AKO Foundation, a London based philanthropic foundation.

– We are extremely grateful that the AKO Foundation has so wholeheartedly supported our ambition to present Lucie Rie in a Danish context, and not least, since the foundation has just so generously supported the realisation of our current international exhibition “Playing with Fire: Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto”. This is truly an adventure for us, and we are incredibly proud to be able to present this exhibition at CLAY, says Pia Wirnfeldt.

You can visit the exhibition at the museum in Middelfart, Denmark, from 13 October 2024 to 30 March 2025. Read more at claymuseum.dk