Modern Masters: A CENTURY OF BRITISH ART

‘I have favourite places — Mycenae and Pisa, and Siena, for instance — and I feel that in a previous life I must have laid two or three of the stones in Siena Cathedral, or even perhaps one or two of those at Mycenae!’

Throughout his career the idea and experience of Greece resonated deeply for Nicholson and continued to find its way into his work. Although he did not visit Greece until spring 1959, he returned to the region on four occasions in the subsequent years.

In the mid-nineteen-seventies, towards the end of her life, Lucie Rie began to develop more elaborate silhouettes in her pottery. She had previously specialised in short pots and footed bowls, both of a distinctive elementary design. Her introduction of a double curve into her vases was a decisive move away from these earlier, simpler pieces. This new feature came to typify her later work, the double curve indicating the new complexity she sought. Breaking with the founding convention of studio pottery, namely that a pot is spun on the wheel from a single piece of clay, this vase belongs to a small group of composite pots that Rie made in the nineteen-seventies. The conventionally bulb-like base of the vase is surmounted by a tall bulging neck – an elaborate outline which developed from Rie’s style of flared-lip vases. The two rounded parts of the vase were spun separately, only being joined later during firing.