Lucie Rie (1902-1995) was born in Vienna and studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule. By 1936, she was widely known and exhibited across Europe, winning Gold Medals at the Brussels International Exhibition and the Milan Triennale. However in 1938 she travelled to England to flee the German occupation of Austria, where she remained for the rest of her life.

During the war years, and immediately after, she established a ceramic button-making business in her London flat as a pragmatic means of making a living in the difficult economic environment of wartime and post-war Britain. However, wanting to return to making pots, she took on Hans Coper (1921-1980) as an assistant, and together they established a business producing domestic tablewares. However Rie pursued her individual work when the production regime of the business permitted and although her style of pottery, based on European modernism and minimalism, was quite different from that of Bernard Leach, they also established a close, enduring friendship.
For a similar example in The Museum of Modern Art, New York, (MOMA) go to http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=4915, MOMA number 1320.2001.