Jonathan Anderson loves Lucie Rie

Tyler Watamanuk on Jonathan Anderson’s deep love of the esteemed Austrian-born British potter.

On the back cover of Lucie Rie: Modernist Potter, Emmanuel Cooper’s biography of the late celebrated ceramicist, sits a trio of cornflower-blue mugs. They are similar but not entirely uniform. The silhouette is defined by straight lines with a subtle taper towards the base. Each is decorated with thin, incised marks — a technique called sgraffito seen through much of Rie’s work — and the finish is matte. The trio is emblematic of what Rie, who died in 1995 at the age of 93, did so well: simplicity and precision with quiet style. 

Enter the luxury designer Jonathan Anderson, who rose to prominence in the mid-2010s by reinventing Loewe with his fantastical clothing and a love for offbeat craftsmanship. His star continues to rise, now newly minted as Dior’s creative director. I watched a short video of a man who recently saw the designer smoking outside Gare du Nord; when he went up to ask for a selfie, Anderson promptly told him no. This is what society should want its capital-F Fashion designers to do.

But Anderson has a sweet spot for old mugs, and in particular he is a diehard fan of Rie’s. His namesake label, JW Anderson, has just teamed up with her estate to bring the old designs — those beautiful blue ones from the back of her biography — into production for the first time. To make it happen, the brand turned to Wedgwood, a British pottery company with such a long legacy that it was founded by a man who wore a powdered wig. (His name was Josiah Wedgwood and the year was 1759.) To see Rie get some of today’s fashion spotlight is a joy.

She was born in 1902 in Vienna and studied at the Wiener Werkstätte, a leading workshop that paired avant-garde artists and designers with accomplished artisans. In 1938, she fled Nazism and moved to England, setting up shop in a tiny house and rebuilding her pottery studio from nothing. At first, she struggled to earn a living. Her primary source of income was making ceramic buttons for the fashion industry before moving into tableware.

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