The Lucie Rie Archive at the Crafts Study Centre
Dame Lucie Rie (1902–95) was one of Britain’s most eminent potters. She enjoyed aesthetic acclaim, financial success, and great public honours in Britain, from a retrospective exhibition at the Arts Council in 1967 to the award of her Damehood in 1991. Her work achieved an international profile, culminating in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (1994–95) which presented Rie’s ceramics alongside those of her onetime colleague and great friend, the potter Hans Coper (1920–79). The Lucie Rie Archive was given to the Crafts Study Centre by Dr Max and Mrs Yvonne Mayer in 1999, with further donations by Cyril Frankel in 2005. The archive represents the papers and photographs, and some miscellaneous items, from Rie’s combined home and studio at Albion Mews, totalling over 9,000 individual items. Funding from the Headley Trust c.2004 enabled the digitisation of about 600 items, and led to the production of a digital resource which provides an illustrated overview of the Rie archive.
