LUCIE RIE / HANS COPER: MASTERWORKS BY TWO BRITISH POTTERS

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994, First edition, 32 pp., 8 1/2" X 11", Stapled wraps Very good Lucie Rie's pots were made of stoneware or porcelain. She did not follow the usual potter's procedure of bisque-firing the object, applying glaze, and re-firing it. Instead she painted her glazes directly onto the "green," unfired body, firing the piece only once. She experimented with a wide spectrum of colors and her glazes, often softly modulated, ranged from satiny smooth to deeply pitted "volcanic" textures. Applied decoration, when it appeared, was abstract and discreet, used to enhance the piece rather than to call attention to itself. Decoration was generally restricted to sgaffito (lines scratched into the glaze with a needle) or inlay, where the lines were cut into the body itself and filled with a contrasting glaze. Rie stamped the bottom of her pieces with a distinctive "LR" and sometimes decorated them with color or sgraffito. Throughout Hans Coper's career, his work at the potte