‘I am a potter, but he was an artist’ commented Lucie Rie in an interview in 1988. (1) Two of Britain’s most eminent studio potters, Rie and Hans Coper shared a workshop until 1958 and remained great friends until Coper’s premature death in 1981. Although their styles were always distinct, the effect of each was invariably influential on the other.

Born in 1902, Lucie Gomperz grew up in the rich intellectual environment of early twentieth-century Vienna. The daughter of a prominent ear, nose and throat specialist, she was educated at home. In 1922, she entered the Kunstgewerbeschule, the art school attached to the Wiener Werkstätte, and was immediately ‘lost’ to the potter’s wheel.

Taught by ...