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Lucy Rei Glazes?


HAUKSBEE

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One of my most favorite ceramics books is Tony Birks "LUCY RIE". Does anyone know if Lucy Rei's glazes formulas have been written down and saved for posterity? Thanks.

 

 

 

 

I share your love for Lucie Rie's work. I have one recipe (copied long ago from a UK ceramics book but never used) attributed to her. Here is the text (verbatim with commentary) from the book:

 

Lucie Rie's White (oxidized, 1,250°C)

 

58 soda feldspar

14 china clay

10 zinc oxide

10 tin oxide

8 whiting

8 flint

 

This glaze is the famous glossy white glaze used on Lucie Rie's tableware, often stained brown with manganese and copper carbonate on the rims. It can be tried with less tin - 5 or even 2 percent - but is expensive to make, and inclined to crawl when used on biscuit ware, perhaps because of the high zinc content. Lucie Rie's pots, of course, are once fired, which avoids this problem.

 

 

Hope this helps,

Miri

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"I share your love for Lucie Rie's work. I have one recipe (copied long ago from a UK ceramics book but never used) attributed to her. Here is the text (verbatim with commentary) from the book."

 

Thank you very much for the recipe. It will be logged and treasured.

 

ps: just found this site in England. They seem to have inherited all her notebooks and correspondence. I sent a query about glazes. If I hear back from them, I'll add to this post.

 

info@vads.ac.uk

 

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I would be very interested to hear if those folks get back to you!

 

Miri: They did reply, and passed me on to another group that has Lucy Rie's notebooks and correspondence. The second group (name escapes me right now) e-mailed me back today saying that the person I need to talk to (Jean Vacher) is on holiday all week. I will try again on Monday. Hopefully Lucy's notebooks have been transcribed. Their e-mail is craftscenter@ucreative.ac.uk

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I would be very interested to hear if those folks get back to you!

 

Miri: They did reply, and passed me on to another group that has Lucy Rie's notebooks and correspondence. The second group (name escapes me right now) e-mailed me back today saying that the person I need to talk to (Jean Vacher) is on holiday all week. I will try again on Monday. Hopefully Lucy's notebooks have been transcribed. Their e-mail is craftscenter@ucreative.ac.uk

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks!

 

Miri

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Lucy Rie Archive sent a reply yesterday. Alas! The news is not good. Here's Ms Vacher's response...

 

 

Dear Mr Kelly,

 

 

 

 

Thank you for your enquiry regarding Lucie Rie's glazes. Unfortunately, we don't have a transcribed set of recipes that I am able to send you. The Rie archive has been fully catalogued and I have attached a screenshot of what we have in terms of glaze recipe books. This gives you a broad idea of what the archive contains, but short of inviting you to see the material for yourself, I am afraid that I am unable to be of help. Moreover, as you see there is the additional problem that some of the earlier notebooks are written in German.

 

 

 

 

Emmanuel Cooper, ceramicist and former editor of Ceramic Review has been using the Lucie Rie archive extensively to write a book on her (as yet unpublished), and might be able to answer some technical questions. I should be happy to forward on an email from you.

 

I replied that I would indeed appreciate it if she'd forward my query on to Emmanual Cooper. [We'll see what we see.] However, in the list of things shown in the screenshot [which was a directory tree of items in the collection] I saw "Book of Hans Coper recipes". I asked her about that since Hans Coper and Lucy worked together for so long. Indeed, he was her apprentice and as such would have used [and mixed] the glazes in her studio. I said that even if his glaze notebooks were untranscribed, if the pages were legible to an English speaker, I'd love to see a .pdf file copy. So...we may have a side door to Lucy's glazes yet.

 

 

 

 

 

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Thanks for sharing!

Miri

 

Better yet...I got a reply from Emmaneul Cooper.

 

Dear Robert Kelley,

The Crafts Study Centre has forwarded your enquiry about Lucie Ries's glazes. Yes, these have been transcribed and fully listed. These are

available in back copies of the magazine Ceramic Review. If you check on the website there is a search engine, but I am sure you will find what you want.

Good luck with your research.

Sincerely

Emmanuel Cooper

 

So far, I'm stymied on using the search engine. I entered (1) Lucy Rei glaze formulas, (2) Glaze formulas, and (3) Lucy Rei. Got zero returns on all of them. A bit of a surprise. I've sent off a query to the editorial staff. In the meantime, I'll start through the Archive year-by-year and see what turns up. At least we now know they exist.

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FWIW, I just searched for Lucie (ie, NOT "Lucy") in the CR archive... the article Cooper wrote about her notebooks is in CR 150. Cooper wrote several other articles about Rei as well. Many art museums (and/or colleges with good ceramics programs) have libraries which subscribe to CR... one near you may be open to the public so you can browse to get the articles with the specific info you want.

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  • 8 years later...

Terri

I think you can find it in this book:

Modern pots : Hans Coper, Lucie Rie & their contemporaries : the Lisa Sainsbury Collection
 
Hans Coper, Lucie Rie & their contemporaries
 
Hans Coper, Lucie Rie and their contemporaries
 
Lisa Sainsbury Collection
Author:
Frankel, Cyril
ISBN:
9780500975954
 
9780946009367
Publication Information:
Norwich : University of East Anglia ; Wappingers Falls, NY : Distributed in the U.S. and Canada by Antique Collectors' Club, ©2000.
 
I will not have access to the library until Tuesday afternoon to look it up.
 
here is a recipe that I have used on 'stuff' for  raku,  cone 3 oxidation, cone 5 reduction/oxidation,   and at cone 10 reduction.  It is close to Lucie's concoction published in the book.   
the 'goldness' is related to thickness and it runs when thick.  For me it worked best (gold forming) on white bodies and porcelain. 
I have worked with it applied at green ware states and bisque state.  also have applied over and under other glazes (but don't remember the outcomes other not total disasters).  The recipe is just a starting point.  tweak everything to fit your clay body and firing conditions.  I think the color depends on the elemental ratio of copper and manganese.  During my playing with this line of decoration I also applied copper carbonate and manganese dioxide separately as suspensions in water (with some detergent to adjust surface attention) over the "bronze glaze" mixture.    
 
∆3 Bronze
.                                       grams
.Manganese dioxide               60  
.Cu carbonate                        10
.Red Clay -  I used Redart     20
.EPK                                      10
.total                                    100 grams
 
LT
 
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Hans also did her firing,  he died  but Lucie lived to a very old age so clear out of your studio when firing. Wear protection when mixing glazes

I once saw a doc on teev where A very old Lucy was emptying her top loader. The interviewer was doing his utmost not to lay hands on her little rump as she balanced midriff on the edge of her kiln, head and upper body out of view in it's interior. Feet dangling above stool.

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45 minutes ago, Babs said:

Hans also did her firing,  he died  but Lucie lived to a very old age so clear out of your studio when firing. Wear protection when mixing glazes

I once saw a doc on teev where A very old Lucy was emptying her top loader. The interviewer was doing his utmost not to lay hands on her little rump as she balanced midriff on the edge of her kiln, head and upper body out of view in it's interior. Feet dangling above stool.

If you haven't gone arse over tea kettle into the kiln, you haven't lived!  

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