A new exhibition at the Jewish Museum – Shaping Ceramics: From Lucie Rie to Edmund de Waal – will bring together works by 12 leading ceramicists of Jewish heritage to explore their contribution to the British crafts scene. Beginning by surveying the careers of a number of refugees from Nazism, the exhibition will also include works by a number of contemporary ceramicists and artists, some of them made especially for the exhibition.
The exhibition will open with a number of important works by the renowned ceramicists Lucie Rie and Hans Coper, both of whom fled Europe in the 1930s. They changed British studio ceramics by rejecting the Anglo-Oriental style of Bernard Leach whose style had until that point dominated the field, and instead importing modernist ideas from the continent, making work that was sleek, sophisticated and cosmopolitan.
David Breuer-Weil’s Emergence will be included in this exhibition. Emergence explores the concept of Adam, the first man, being fashioned out of the earth. Breuer-Weil explains that for this reason making works in clay is of the most profound significance to an artist with a knowledge of this cultural background. Clay is not just another medium, but symbolises the origins of humanity and life itself.
The exhibition will include a reconstruction of a potter’s studio in which demonstrations can take place.
Shaping Ceramics: Ceramics from Lucie Rie to Edmund de Waal will be on display at the Jewish Museum London from 10th November 2016 – 26th February 2017.
