Women in Design: Lucie Rie (1902-1995)

In 1995, Lucie Rie's death at the age of 93 brought an end to the long and productive life of one of the leading studio potters of the 20th century. In many ways, it also marked the end of an era for the craft itself.

Born in Vienna in 1902, Lucie Rie (née Gomperz) was the third and youngest child of a prosperous ear, nose and throat doctor who possessed progressive artistic taste -- his surgery and waiting-room was designed in the latest Viennese Modernism style. Gisela, her mother, family’s fortune was in the wine business. She divided her time between her family’s city and country home and watched her father play chess with Sigmund Freud.

Artistically inclined but uncertain of her path, Rie enrolled at the Vienna Kunstgewerberschule in 1922. She studied under Michael Powolney who was more of a modeler than a potter with an old-fashioned eye. Under him, she learned to throw, a technique she continued to use all her life.

Her work was hugely influenced by pared-down and functional forms advocated by Josef Hoffman. Adapting Hoffmann's credo, she made earthenware pots, tall cylinders, rounded bowls, and tea-sets that were sparse in form and often with fine rims and thick handles.

Rare "Vienna Period" vase, circa 1935
She signed her works Lucie Rie Gomperz during this time
Phillips de Pury & Company, June 12th, 2008

She also gained a sound knowledge of ceramic chemistry and experimented with applying stoneware glazes on unfired red clay creating the first of her volcanic jars with deeply fissured and pitted sides.

An ancient technique, raw glazing became a signature feature of her work. Whether decorative or functional, she always thought of her work to integrate with the domestic interior.
With Hoffman's help, she held her first exhibition in 1923 at Hoffman's Palais Stoclet in Brussels. And two years later participated in the Exposition Universelle in Paris. In 1926, she married Hans Rie (1901-1985), an easy-going young businessman who worked in the Bruder Bohm hat factory. They had little in common except for a fondness for skiing. Rie turned to her work.

Lucie Gomperz and Hans Rie on a skiing trip, 1925

Over the next decade she further developed and honed her style, but with the union of Austria with the Nazi Germany, she and her husband escaped to London in 1938. Her husband left for America and in 1940, they amicably divorced. Her popularity had not caught on in London where the work of Bernard Leach dominated. Leach tried to influence her with his heavier oriental meats Arts + Crafts aesthetic.


He thought her pots were too thin and her turning too fussy. but her own work remained severe and urban. Rie rooted her works and ideas in the Modern Movement. Still, they remained life-long friends.

‘I am a potter, but he was an artist’ Lucie Rie said while being interviewed by The Guardian in 1988.

 Her work nearly halted during the war. She hired assistants to make colorfully glazed ceramic buttons and jewelry. One assistant named Hans Coper, a young German refugee, was hired in 1946 to help make the buttons. Hans Coper trained as her assistant and together they created an enormous range of tableware and on off pieces.  Four years later they began to share a series of exhibitions and supply Heal’s department store with tableware.

Tablewares by Lucie Rie and Hans Coper, c.1955
Porcelain with manganese slip and sgraffito decoration

Rie’s and Coper’s personal styles started to diverge: hers remained functional, his became sculptural. Eventually, in 1958, Coper decided to set up his own studio and teach extensively.

From 1860 to 1972 she taught part time at the Camberwell School of Art where she was known to be a bit rigorous and unsympathetic to her students -- her demeanor somewhat steely, though pleasant. Always elegant, it was said that she stepped off her wheel after throwing as clean and spotless as when she went on.



Porcelain Cylindrical vase with flaring neck, c. 1976
Phillips de Pury & Company, September 27, 2011



In 1981 she was advanced CBE and continued to exhibit and work throughout the decade, but after a series of strokes in the early 1990s she had to stop. In 1991 she was made Dame. She died in her home on April 1, 1995.

Victoria and Albert Museum

Quietly spoken, she would politely show visitors around her studio and offer them strong coffee or tea and home-made chocolate cake . She possessed a clear understanding of her materials and control of form. She was one of the most creative studio potters of the twentieth century. 



top image: Lucie Rie 1987 at her front door Jim Hair ; all other images with the exception of Phillips &de Pury from The Lucie Rie Archive at the Craft Studies Center.

Sophia Hayden Bennett

The Board of Lady Managers ended up awarding Sophia a gold medal "for delicacy of style, artistic taste, and geniality and elegance of the interior hall." There was a dedication ceremony for the buildings, but Sophia wasn’t there. Rumors began to spread that she suffered a mental breakdown, which plainly indicated why women should stay at home and not wander into the realm of men.

Critics dealt her another blow when they insisted the building was too feminine. One said regardless of her technical knowledge, the structure with its “graceful timidity or gentleness” was clearly designed by a woman.

The Women's Building was torn down after the Exposition ended. Sophia, frustrated with the way she had been treated, retired from architecture. She later married William Blackstone Bennett, an artist. Sophia never designed another building after the 1893 fair, and lived a quiet life in Massachusetts until her death in 1953.

(first image: Exterior of The Women's Building, period photograph, Boston College Digital Archive; second image: MIT)

Women in Design: Sophia Hayden (1868 - 1953)

Born in Santiago, Chile. Her father was an American from New England and her mother was South American. When Sophia was six, she was sent to Boston, Massachusetts to live with her paternal grandparents. She became interested in architecture in high school. In 1886 she was the first woman to be accepted to the architecture program at MIT; she graduated with honors in 1890.

Front elevation of Hayden’s thesis project: A Fine Arts Museum, 1890. (from MIT)

Floor Plan and Section, 1890. (from MIT)

After graduating, Sophia could not find employment as an architect; she accepted a position teaching drawing at a Boston high school. The following year, she entered a design competition for the World’s Colombian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. Her design was for the Woman's Building -- a structure given to various social causes such as church groups, temperance societies, a model hospital ward and kindergarten, a sanitary kitchen and a library. It was also to house exhibitions of embroidery, knitting, lace, fans and crockery. Sophia won the competition with her design of a three-story, white building in the Italian Renaissance-Revival style with arches and columned terraces. For this she was paid a modest sum of $1,000 for her design, while men who one competitions for the fair were paid 10 times as much.

Exterior of The Women's Building, period photograph (1894?) Boston College Digital Archive

Sophia traveled to Chicago to produce the final drawings, leaving the execution to Daniel Burnham. Burnham was very pleased with her work describing her as having great adaptability and being a hard worker. She returned six months later to direct the interior and exterior designs of the buildings. At that same time, she discovered another woman was involved in the project. Her name was Bertha Palmer, and she had other ideas.

Bertha Honoré Palmer (1849-1918) Chicago History Museum

A statuesque socialite with well-coiffured wavy hair, Bertha Palmer was a power to be reckoned with. She was not easy to approach. She demanded calling cards be passed scrutinized and screened by several of her servants before any visitor could speak with her. Being of Huguenot descent, no one ever contradicted her. But that was to change once she met the twenty-one year old Sophia.

Officers of Board of Lady Managers, portraits of 10 women. Key: 1. President Mrs. Potter Palmer 2. Mrs. Ralph Trautman 3. Mrs. Edwin C. Burleigh 4. Mrs. Charles Price 5. Mrs. Katherline L. Minor 6. Mrs. Beriah Wilkins 7. Mrs. Flora Beall Ginty 8.Mrs. Russell B. Harrison 9. Mrs. V.C. Merideth. 10.Susan Gale Cooke. 1896. (image via the Field Museum's flicker account.)

Mrs. Palmer was elected President of The Board of Lady Managers for the 1893 Fair. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Mrs. Palmer (née Honoré) met her husband, a wealthy dry goods owner, while she was shopping in Chicago with her mother. Potter Palmer was 23 years her senior. He moved into real estate and became immensely wealthy. Mrs. Palmer enjoyed their North Side mansion with a roof-top ballroom and picture gallery filled with Impressionist paintings she brought back from Paris. She also loved diamond jewelry.

Paul V Galvin Library: The book of the Fair

For Sophia’s building, Mrs. Palmer had invited prominent women to donate architectural elements to adorn the building. Mrs. Palmer believed the building would be better with these donations. Sophia disagreed. A mishmash of elements would dilute her vision, her concept and overall design aesthetic. As the doors, window grilles, columns, wood paneling, balustrades, slabs of onyx and black marble, granite steps, sculpted figures, and tapestries came pouring in, Sophia turned each one down. This hurt the feelings of the high-society donors, which didn’t sit very well with Mrs. Palmer. Sophia explained to Mrs. Palmer her schematic program for the structure -- the exterior and interior -- and why these random donated elements would not work. But Mrs. Palmer wouldn’t hear of it. She fired Sophia from the project and reassigned the final decoration to Candace Wheeler.

Paul V Galvin Library: The book of the Fair

Sophia walked into Burnham’s office, described what happened and from exhaustion began to cry. Burnham quickly called a doctor. Sophia was placed in an ambulance and driven away with the rubber wheels quietly crunching along the gravel road towards the sanitarium. Sophia was said to have a “… violent attack of high nervous excitement of the brain.”

(top image from Penn Libraries.)