Lucie Rie: a button can tell the story of a workshop

A button can fasten a jacket and catch the eye at the same time. For ceramic artist Lucie Rie, even objects this small became part of design: the Victoria and Albert Museum holds a selection of her fashion buttons alongside cups, vessels and tools. Looking at them together invites a simple question: how much room is there to choose a form, a material and a surface in an object made to be used? [1]

Rie was born in Vienna in 1902 and studied at the city’s school of applied arts. In 1938, as a Jewish woman, she was forced to leave Austria to escape Nazi persecution and arrived in Britain. In London she set up a small workshop at her home in Albion Mews. During the war she worked on buttons for glassmaker Fritz Lampl’s company, then developed her own versions in stoneware, a ceramic fired at high temperatures. [1][2]

An object held by the V&A helps explain the work behind a finished button: a two-part plaster mould from her studio, dated approximately 1941–1947. It was used to give ceramic buttons their shape. The record notes that Rudi Neufeldt made moulds and pressed pieces for Rie’s approval. The workshop also faced wartime interruptions; it reopened in 1945 and Hans Coper joined in 1946. This was not a story of creativity separate from other people’s work. [2]

Attributions, however, require care. The Fitzwilliam Museum holds five green glass buttons with raised details and brass mounts, dated approximately 1940–1945. Its record lists Rie as the probable designer, not as a certain attribution. The glass in these examples should not be confused with the stoneware of the buttons Rie produced independently: objects with a similar purpose can be made from different materials using different processes. [3][1]

Ceramics remained part of Rie’s practice. The Metropolitan Museum holds one of her porcelain bowls, dated around 1974–1975: a useful form with a different scale and purpose from the buttons. The V&A describes how surface and form worked together in her pieces: glazes, oxides and finely scratched lines could all contribute to the overall effect. A glaze is a coating applied to ceramics; it is not simply a colour added at the end of a design. [4][1]

For an editorial example, look at a coat button and a bowl on a table. What do their size, edges and surfaces contribute to the gestures of the people using them? That question does not prove that either was designed like one of Rie’s works. It does help us notice choices that are often invisible. Our illustration imagines a worktable; it does not reconstruct a photograph or a specific museum object. [1][2]