20/10/2026
With Frieze week now behind us, we continue to celebrate the powerful role that London played as the centre of the international art world in the post-war period. Lucie Rie/Hans Coper: Life at the Wheel highlights the role that London played, hosting emigree artists who had fled Europe during the 1930s and ‘40s.
From her small home and studio at 18 Albion Mews, Lucie Rie together with Hans Coper reshaped perceptions of just what a pot could be – using traditional ideas of the vessel form and expanding them further through ingenious designs and stunning surface decoration techniques.
The twelve years that Rie and Coper spent working together at Albion Mews were some of the most important and exciting years in the lives of both artists. While Rie valued the support of other assistants at the studio, her deep personal friendship with Coper was unlike any relationship she had experienced before. It became a friendship based on mutual respect and admiration, each learning from the other – as Rie later stated ‘I am a potter but he was an artist … He taught me what was right and what was wrong.’
Read more about the story of Rie and Coper in the accompanying exhibition, beautifully designed by A Practice for Everyday Life with essays by Tanya Harrod, Nigel Slater, Nigel Wood, Robin Cawdron-Stewart and Edmund de Waal – available to purchase from the gallery or online!
📷 Hans Coper holding Lucie Rie’s legs as she unpacks the kiln at Albion Mews, c.1954. Photograph © Estate of Jane Coper & The Lucie Rie and Hans Coper Foundation
Lucie Rie and Hans Coper at Albion Mews, early 1950s. Photograph © Estate of Jane Coper & The Lucie Rie and Hans Coper Foundation
Rie & Coper, Large jug, c.1950s and Rie & Coper, Cup and Saucer, c.1948. Photographs by Sylvain Deleu