Artist 101

1. Early life

Hans Coper was born in Germany in 1920. He later fled the Nazi regime in 1939, seeking refuge in London. However, war was declared just weeks after his arrival and Coper was arrested as an ‘enemy alien’, then sent to an internment camp in Canada. By 1946, his fortunes had turned. He was back in London and had found work as an assistant in Lucie Rie’s studio. Rie was a fellow émigré and a successful potter, who quickly recognised Coper’s potential and became his mentor.

Introduction to ceramics

When Coper arrived at Rie’s studio, he had no experience in ceramics. Rie sent him for a week’s training to learn how to throw the wheel, after which the pair started producing functional objects together. With her encouragement, Coper started designing his own pots in the 1950s, and by the end of the decade, he had his own studio in Hertfordshire and a reputation as an accomplished wheel artist.

Read more: 5 Things To Know About Lucie Rie

2. Contemporary influences and ancient inspiration

Elements of Coper’s aesthetic are undoubtedly influenced by Rie’s practice. In the 1940s, Rie developed her signature sgraffito technique – scratching lines into the glaze to reveal the texture underneath - while she added this as a decorative effect to her colourful glazes, Coper’s preoccupation was with texture itself. Using only black and white slips, he limited his palette and experimented with etching, sanding and rubbing to create new textural depth.

With their scoured surfaces and neutral tones, Coper’s work is reminiscent of ancient vessels excavated from the earth. Indeed, the ancient world was a rich source of inspiration for the artist, as it was for his modernist forebears, Alberto Giacometti and Constantin Brancusi. Coper would spend hours studying historic artefacts in the British Museum, and return to his wheel to translate ancient forms into abstract sculpture.

3. Iconic designs

While Coper is perhaps best known for the monumental sculptural candlesticks he designed for Coventry Cathedral, the majority of his work comprises vessels: from cups and bowls to vases and pots.

Some are formed of a single shape, such as this ovoid volume, while others are assembled from multiple elements. Discs feature in several of his designs: bottle vases are elegantly finished with a disc atop the neck, while footed cups are balanced by a central disc between the body and the base.

Stay updated with our auctions. Sign up to receive your weekly newsletter of global auctions, stories and more from Bonhams and our sister companies. Subscribe now

Coper’s earliest work is functional tableware produced in collaboration with Lucie Rie, including pouring vessels and cups, and are impressed with both artists’ seals or initials. Coper’s solo outputs from his early career show his experimentations with sgraffito, the rough scratches revealing lighter tones under the deep earthy glaze, as displayed in this studio pottery bowl from 1955.

Coper sculpted some vessels into recognisable shapes, the bodies flattened into a ‘Spade’ or ‘Thistle’ form, each poised on a narrow base. His final body of work, created in the mid-1970s, takes on ‘Cycladic’ forms. This series of small pots features only a handful of different designs, in which the body is seamlessly blended with a plinth. These pieces are viewed as the culmination of a lifetime’s work at the wheel, in which the artist achieves absolute purity of form.

4. Legacy

By the 1960s, Coper had established himself as an important artist and was exhibiting his work internationally. At the same time, he began to guide and inspire the next generation of British ceramicists in long-held teaching posts at Camberwell School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. He taught until the mid-1970s when his physical health declined and he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). He continued to work at his studio in Somerset, adjusting his practice to handle smaller quantities of clay as his dexterity diminished.

Two years after his death in 1981, a retrospective exhibition was shown at various institutions. Starting at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, it travelled to Germany and the Netherlands, and ended at the Serpentine Gallery in London. In 2020, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford celebrated Coper’s centenary with a comprehensive exhibition of his ceramics. Today, Coper’s work can be found in the permanent collections of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum de Fundatie in the Netherlands.

5. On the market

Coper is enjoying increasing popularity on the secondary market, as well as appreciation from a wider range of collectors. “Over the past six to eight years, Coper’s works have gradually made the transition from the decorative art to the contemporary art market,” says Dan Tolson, International Director of Modern Decorative Art & Design in New York.

The finite number of his works has pushed up prices. “Over the past eight years, competition for the best Coper ceramics has increased. Since 2021, we’ve seen three exceptional pieces achieve over $700,000—including a new world auction record for a Tall Bottle Vase with Disc, sold for £655,500 ($750,000) in London in December 2022.”

“The hybrid forms that mix ancient and contemporary references are the most popular Coper ceramics on the market, especially works that show his love for ancient Cycladic forms, Alberto Giacometti, William Turnbull and Constantin Brancusi,” explains our specialist.

“First-time collectors of Coper’s work should look towards his earlier functional designs, from around the time he was mentored by Rie. These are both spectacular and more accessibly priced. They are also important in their own right, as they show the development of Coper’s style—as well as the influence of his mentor. This kind of narrative is always fascinating and makes the collecting of his work supremely rewarding.”

Own a similar Hans coper ceramic? Submit your artwork or collection online for a free auction estimate