Lucie Rie (nee Gomperz) was born in 1902 in Vienna.
Her father, a doctor specialising in 'ear, nose and throat', was from a very well respected Viennese Jewish family and her mother was from the similarly wealthy and influential Wolf family.
For Lucie life in Vienna prior to the First World War was ordered within a very understanding but liberal family scattered with culture.
Lucie had two brothers one was killed in 1917 and the other before WW11 left for America
It was quite a departure from what had been expected when Lucie decided to follow an artistic education which was the foundation of her creative skills.
Lucie married in 1926 to Hans Rie and they were amicably divorced in 1939 he having left for the States having first travelled with Lucy to England.
The Gomperz family were very well connected in Viennese society and her father was often 'referred to' by Sigmund Freud for his expertise in the ear,nose and throat cases.
Is the British art critic Will Gompertz family in any way related to Lucie's family from Vienna accepting that his surname spelling has the extra 't'?
Lucie came to England in 1938
In 1939 she met with the celebrated potter Bernard Leach from St Ives and they remained very close friends until he died in 1979.
Lucie was also very close to a fellow potter Hans Coper who had fled Germany in 1939 and started as an untrained assistant to Lucie in her now famous small studio ( a converted stables) in Albion Mews near Hyde Park - in the centre of London W2. They remained friends until his death in 1981, he having left her studio in 1959 when he joined The Digswell Art Trust which is about 10 miles from here in Hitchin Hertfordshire. In 1967 Hans set up his own pottery in Frome - Somerset
I have many files and clippings about Studio pottery and many complementary books
For me some of the best proportioned and aesthetic shapes and line in studio pottery
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