Jennifer Elizabeth LeeOBE (born 1956) is a Scottish ceramic artist with an international reputation.[1] Lee's distinctive pots are hand built using traditional pinch and coil methods. She has developed a method of colouring the pots by mixing metallic oxides into the clay before making. Her work is held in over forty museums and public collections worldwide,[2] including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2018 Lee won the Loewe Craft Prize, an award initiated by Jonathan Anderson in 2017.[3][4] The prize was presented to her at an awards ceremony at The Design Museum in London.
Lee was born in North East Scotland, daughter of a farmer.[5] She was educated in Aberdeenshire. In 1974 Lee started a course in physiotherapy at Woolmanhill Hospital, Aberdeen.[6] Lee's interest in ceramics began after meeting Robin Welch in Suffolk in 1974. She worked with Robin and Jenny Welch during the summers of 1975 and 1976 as a studio assistant.[7]
From 1975 to 1979 she studied ceramics and tapestry at Edinburgh College of Art under the tutelage of Tony Franks. On completing her studies she was awarded the David Gordon Memorial Trust Prize and Andrew Grant Travelling Scholarship.[8] In 1979-80 she spent eight months travelling in the USA where she researched South-West Native American prehistoric ceramics and visited pueblos. She met with contemporary West Coast potters, including Peter Voulkos, Paul Soldner, Ron Nagle, Michael Frimkess and Viola Frey. In New Mexico she visited Ken Price and Rick Dillingham in their studios and in Oregon she took part in workshops with Paul Soldner, Stephen De Staebler and Betty Feves.[9]
2014 Guest artist in residence Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Shigaraki, Japan 2015 Guest artist in residence Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Shigaraki, Japan 2018 Artist in residence Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Shigaraki, Japan 2019 Guest artist in Residence, Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art, Mashiko, Japan[14]
Major exhibitions
Jennifer Lee has had retrospective exhibitions of her work at the Röhsska Museum in Göteborg, Jennifer Lee - Handbyggda Stengodskärl 1979-1993, Sweden in 1993,[15]Aberdeen Museums and Art Galleries, Jennifer Lee - Handbuilt Ceramics 1979-1994, Scotland in 1994. In 2009 Lee was invited by Issey Miyake to exhibit in a three-person exhibition alongside Lucie Rie and Ernst Gamperl at the Miyake Issey Foundation gallery 21 21 DESIGN SIGHT in Tokyo. 'U-TSU-WA'. The installation was designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando. In 2019 Lee had a major exhibition of ceramics and drawings at Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge, Jennifer Lee: the potter’s space curated by Sarah Griffin and exhibition design by the architect Jamie Fobert.
Jennifer Lee lives and works in London and regularly exhibits in the UK and Japan.
[17] 2019 - Salisbury Collection of Studio Ceramics, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK. 2019 - Modernity & Elegance: The British Collection by Bernard Leach, Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, and Jennifer Lee, The Museum of Ceramic Art, Hyogo, Japan. 2019 - POTs-the Vessel, The National Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand. 2019 - 75th Scripps College Ceramic Annual, Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Scripps College Claremont, California, US. 2018 - The Diana Reitberger Collection, The Gardiner Museum, Toronto, Canada. 2018 - The Dramatic Vessel, Iwate Museum of Art, Morioka, Japan. 2018 - LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize 2018, Design Museum, London, UK. 2018 - Things of Beauty Growing: British Studio Ceramics, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK. 2018 - Handheld, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Connecticut, US. 2017 - The Ehrlich Collection of American and British Ceramics, San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, Texas, US. 2017 - Things of Beauty Growing: British Studio Ceramics, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, US. 2017 - The Dramatic Vessel, The Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, Shigaraki, Japan. 2015 - Vessels: The Spirit of Modern British Ceramics, Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art, Japan. 2014 - Toward a DESIGN MUSEUM JAPAN, 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT, Tokyo, Japan. 2014 - British Ceramics from Bernard Leach to New Generation, The Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, Shigaraki, Japan. 2013 - International Ceramics, Verkehr Museum, Shizuoka, Japan. 2013 - Friendship Forged in Fire: British Ceramics in America, American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona, California, US. 2011 - Contemporary British Studio Ceramics, The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina, US. 2009 - U-Tsu-Wa, 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT, Tokyo, Japan. 2009 - The CellMark Collection, Röhsska Museet, Göteborg, Sweden. 2008 - British Studio Ceramics - 20th Century Transformations, Buckinghamshire County Museum, Aylesbury, UK. 2006 - Puur Klei, Pottenbakkers Museum, Tegelen, The Netherlands. 2005 - Modern Pots: Lucie Rie, Hans Coper and their Contemporaries, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK. 2004 - European Ceramics, Westerwald Museum, Germany. 2003 - British Studio Ceramics, Buckinghamshire County Museum, Aylesbury, UK. 2002 - Ceramic Modernism: Hans Coper, Lucie Rie and Their Legacy, The Gardiner Museum, Toronto, Canada. 2001 - Modern Pots, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, UK. 2001 - Bengt Julin’s Ceramics, Gustavsbergs Porslinsmuseum, Sweden. 2000 - Britisk Keramik.2000.dk, Keramikmuseet Grimmerhus, Denmark. 2000 - Color and Fire, Defining Moments in Studio Ceramics 1950-2000, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (touring), US. 1999 - Current Context - New Ways of Seeing, Royal Museum, Edinburgh, UK. 1999 - Clay into Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, US. 1998 - Gestaltendes Handwerk, Munich, Germany. 1998 - Collecting Craft, Hove Museum & Art Gallery, Hove, UK. 1998 - Spirit of the Times, Bowes Museum, Durham, UK. 1996 - Design im Wandel: Produkte, Fetische, Rituale, Übersee Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Bremen, Germany.
Solo exhibitions from 2008
[18] 2019 Jennifer Lee: the potter's space, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge. 2019 Jennifer Lee: A personal selection, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.[19] 2019 Jennifer Lee: Works from a Private Collection, Erskine, Hall & Coe. 2018 Sokyo Gallery, Kyoto. 2017 Gallery LVS, Seoul. 2016 Erskine, Hall & Coe, London. 2015 Jennifer Lee - Ceramics made in Shigaraki and London, Sokyo Gallery, Kyoto. 2015 Jennifer Lee, Tada no yume deshou ka, The Institute of Ceramic Studies Gallery Shigaraki. 2013 Erskine, Hall & Coe, London. 2012 Frank Lloyd Gallery, Los Angeles. 2010 Liverpool Street Gallery, Sydney. 2009 Frank Lloyd Gallery, Los Angeles. 2008 Galerie Besson, London.
Public collections
Jennifer Lee's work is held in these collections[20][21][22]
Japan The Museum of Ceramic Art, Hyogo. Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts. Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art, Mashiko. The Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, Shigaraki.
2020 - House of crafts, Korean Craft Museum, Cheongju, South Korea. 2019 - Jennifer Lee: the potter's space, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge. 2019 - Jennifer Lee: Works from a Private Collection, Erskine, Hall & Coe. 2019 - Clay and Abstraction: When Memories Become Form, Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art, Mashiko, Japan 2087 - Loewe Foundation Craft Prize. 2017 - Things of Beauty Growing: British Studio Pottery, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, US and Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK. ISBN9780300227468 2017 - Jennifer Lee: Ceramic and Drawing, Gallery LVS, Seoul, South Korea. 2015 - Jennifer Lee. Ceramics made in Shigaraki and London, Sokyo Gallery, Kyoto, Japan. 2013 - Friendship Forged in Fire: British Ceramics in America. American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona, California, US. ISBN0981672876 2012 - Falls the Shadow, Jennifer Lee, texts: Tanya Harrod and Edmund de Waal, Atlas, London, UK. ISBN 907508448 2011 - Richard Zakin, Ceramics: Mastering the Craft, Krause Publications. ISBN9780873418676 2011 - Vessels: The Spirit of Modern British Ceramics, Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art, Japan. 2010 - Contemporary British Studio Ceramics: The Grainer Collection, Annie Carlano (Editor), Tanya Harrod, Glenn Adamson, 2010 - Michelle Mickey, Yale University Press, US. ISBN9780300167191 2010 - David Whiting, Modern British Potters and Their Studios, A&C Black, London, UK. ISBN9780713687323 2009 - U-Tsu-Wa, Kyuryudo Art-Publishing Co, Tokyo, Japan. ISBN4763009079 2009 - The Cellmark Collection, Cellmark, Göteborg, Sweden. 2009 - Susan and Jan Peterson, Craft and Art of Clay, Prentice Hall, US, Laurence King, London. ISBN0131895982 2009 - Susan and Jan Peterson, Working With Clay, Prentice Hall, US, Laurence King, London. ISBN1856696057 2009 - Emmanuel Cooper, Twentieth Century International Ceramics, Thames & Hudson, London. ISBN0500514879 2008 - Jeffrey Jones, Studio Pottery in Britain, 1900-2005, A&C Black, London. ISBN9780713670134 2008 - Alun Graves, Jennifer Lee, Galerie Besson, London. 2008 - Contemporary Studio Ceramics, California State University, Sacramento. 2007 - Peter Siemssen Ceramics - A Lifelong Passion, Collection Peter Siemssen Foundation, Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart. ISBN3897902567 2007 - James Graham & Sons 1857-2007, James Graham & Sons, New York. 2006 - Michael Hardy, Coiling, A&C Black, London. ISBN0713668903 2005 - Cyril Frankel, Modern Pots: Hans Coper, Lucie Rie & Their Contemporaries: Ceramics from the Lisa Sainsbury Collection, exhibition guide, Dulwich Picture Gallery. ISBN0946009368 2005 - Biennale Européene de Ceramique Contemporaines, Maison de l’Outil et de la Pensée Ouvriere, Troyes, France. ISBN2-915829-05-5 2005 - Celebrating 30 years of the Crafts Council Shop at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Crafts Council, London. 2004 - Jane Perryman, Naked Clay, A&C Black, London. ISBN9781408111055 2004 - Richard Zakin, Electric Kiln Ceramics, 3rd edition, Krause publications. ISBN0873496043 2003 - Betty Blandino, Coiled Pottery Traditional and Contemporary Ways, A&C Black, London. ISBN9780713666465 2003 - Jennifer Lee, New Work, Galerie Besson, London. 2002 - Jennifer Lee, Serene Beauty: Lucie Rie Retrospective, The Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, The Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, Japan. 2002 - Paul Rice, British Studio Ceramics, Crowood Press. 2002 - Susan Peterson, Craft and the Art of Clay, Prentice Hall, US. ISBN0133744639 2002 - Ceramic Modernism: Hans Coper, Lucie Rie and Their Legacy, The Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto. 2001 - 1st World Ceramics Biennale, Ichon World Ceramic Centre Korea. 2001 - Modern Pots: Ceramics from the Lisa Sainsbury Collection, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. ISBN0500975957 2000 - Jo Lauria, Color and Fire Defining Moments in Studio Ceramics 1950-2000, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Rizzoli. ISBN9780847822546 2000 - Susan Peterson, Contemporary Ceramics, Thames & Hudson and Calman/King. ISBN1856691888 2000 - British Keramik: British Ceramics.2000.DK, Keramikmuseet Grimmerhus / Fine Art Productions, Denmark. ISBN9788772458298 2000 - Cyril Frankel, Modern Pots: Hans Coper Lucie Rie and their Contemporaries, The Lisa Sainsbury Collection, Thames & Hudson. ISBN0946009368 2000 - Contemporary Ceramics, Thames & Hudson and Calman/King. 1999 - Jane Adlin, Contemporary Ceramics: Selections from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. ISBN0300200617 1999 - Edmund de Waal, Design Sourcebook: Ceramics, New Holland. ISBN1859740774 1999 - Josie Warshaw and Richard Phethean, The Complete Practical Potter, Anness Publishing Ltd. ISBN1844774538 1999 - 25 Years Crafts Council Shop at the V&A, Crafts Council. 1999 - Current Context, New Ways of Seeing, Royal Museum, Edinburgh. 1999 - Peter Schmitt, Frauen in Europa, Keramikerinnen aus 15 europäisches Ländern, Bayerisher Kunstgewerbe-verein, Munich and Galerie Marianne Heller. 1999 - Eric Yates-Owen, Richard Fournier, British Studio Potters Marks, A&C Black, London. ISBN1408183501
Related Research Articles
Pottery and porcelain is one of the oldest Japanese crafts and art forms, dating back to the Neolithic period. Kilns have produced earthenware, pottery, stoneware, glazed pottery, glazed stoneware, porcelain, and blue-and-white ware. Japan has an exceptionally long and successful history of ceramic production. Earthenwares were made as early as the Jōmon period, giving Japan one of the oldest ceramic traditions in the world. Japan is further distinguished by the unusual esteem that ceramics hold within its artistic tradition, owing to the enduring popularity of the tea ceremony.
Shōji Hamada was a Japanese potter. He had a significant influence on studio pottery of the twentieth century, and a major figure of the mingei (folk-art) movement, establishing the town of Mashiko as a world-renowned pottery centre. In 1955 he was designated a "Living National Treasure".
Studio pottery is pottery made by professional and amateur artists or artisans working alone or in small groups, making unique items or short runs. Typically, all stages of manufacture are carried out by the artists themselves. Studio pottery includes functional wares such as tableware and cookware, and non-functional wares such as sculpture, with vases and bowls covering the middle ground, often being used only for display. Studio potters can be referred to as ceramic artists, ceramists, ceramicists or as an artist who uses clay as a medium.
Dame Lucie Rie, was an Austrian-born, independent, British studio potter working in a time when most ceramicists were male. She is known for her extensive technical knowledge, her meticulously detailed experimentation with glazes and with firing and her unusual decorative techniques.
Julian Francis Stair is an English potter, academic and writer. He makes groups of work using a variety of materials, from fine glazed porcelain to coarse engineering brick clays. His work ranges in scale from hand-sized cups and teapots to monumental jars at over 6 feet tall and weighing half a ton.
Adrian Saxe is an American ceramic artist who was born in Glendale, California in 1943. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Edmund Arthur Lowndes de Waal, is a contemporary English artist, master potter and author. He is known for his large-scale installations of porcelain vessels often created in response to collections and archives or the history of a particular place. De Waal's book The Hare with Amber Eyes was awarded the Costa Book Award for Biography, Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize in 2011 and Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for Non-Fiction in 2015. De Waal's second book The White Road, tracing his journey to discover the history of porcelain was released in 2015.
Tatsuzō Shimaoka was a Japanese mingei potter who studied under Shōji Hamada and later became the second Living National Treasure of Mashiko, Japan. He was best known for his unique Jōmon zogan style of pottery, and was a master of many slip decorating and firing techniques for pottery. Throughout his career, Shimaoka worked collaboratively with a group of workers, students, and apprentices from Japan and abroad. After supervising the loading of what would become his last noborigama firing in late 2007, Shimaoka collapsed, and died several weeks later in late 2007 from acute liver failure at Mashiko in Tochigi Prefecture.
Gwyn Hanssen Pigott OAM (1935–2013) was an Australian ceramic artist. She was recognized as one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists. By the time she died she was regarded as "one of the world's greatest contemporary potters". She worked in Australia, England, Europe, the US, New Zealand, Japan and Korea. In a career spanning nearly 60 years, influences from her apprenticeships to English potters were still apparent in her later work. But in the 1980s she turned away from production pottery to making porcelain still-life groups largely influenced by the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi.
Primavera is a fine arts and crafts gallery at 10 King's Parade in Cambridge, England. Henry Rothschild founded Primavera in 1945 in Sloane Street, London, in order to promote and retail contemporary British art and craft. The Cambridge branch of Primavera was opened in 1959.
Elizabeth Fritsch CBE is a British studio potter and ceramic artist born into a Welsh family in Whitchurch on the Shropshire border. Her innovative hand built and painted pots are often influenced by ideas from music, painting, literature, landscape and architecture.
James C. Watkins was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1951 and raised in a farming family in Athens, Alabama. He is a ceramic artist living in Lubbock, Texas who has worked with clay for over 40 years. He is known for his large scale double-walled ceramic vessels and laser cut porcelain substrate tiles. He is recognized for his textured surfaces, created by using alternative firing techniques. His porcelain substrate tiles are fumedArchived 2014-09-07 at the Wayback Machine with stannous chloride and multi-fired using ferric chloride, gold and platinum luster to achieve colorful surfaces.
Jack Doherty is a Northern Irish studio potter and author. He is perhaps best known for his vessels made of soda-fired porcelain. He has been featured in a number of books, and his work has been exhibited widely in both Europe and North America. Articles of his have appeared in various pottery journals and he has been Chair of the Craft Potters Association.
Philip Rogers was a Welsh studio potter who has been featured in a number of books on studio pottery and worked at Lower Cefnfaes Farm's Marston Pottery from 1984 until his death in December 2020 and previously in Rhayader, Powys, Wales, from 1978 to 1984.
Garth Clark is an art critic, art historian, curator, gallerist, and art dealer from Pretoria, South Africa.
Kurt Weiser is an American ceramicist and professor. His work—explorations of the relationship between man and nature through narratives rendered in vivid color—are described as "Eden-like." His work has often taken the form of teapots, vases, and cups, though he has recently begun crafting globes as well. Weiser is currently the Regents Professor at Arizona State University's School of Art.
Chris Gustin is an American ceramicist. Gustin models his work on the human form, which is shown through the shape, color, and size of the pieces.
Catherine Yarrow was an English artist known for printmaking, painting, ceramics and pottery in a surrealist mode. She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1925. The art historian Patricia Allmer has described her as 'one of the international figures of surrealism and its developments in the 1940s.'
Sara Radstone is a British ceramic artist and lecturer. Her work ranges from intimate wall based sculpture to large scale installations of multiple elements.
Sandy Brown is a British ceramics artist who is nationally and internationally known for her works, which range from smaller ceramics to huge public sculptures. Brown is a Fellow of the Craft Potters Association.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
