Post War & Contemporary Ceramics 
19 February 2025
Post War & Contemporary Ceramics 
103

Jennifer Lee b.1956

Dark flashed, metallic interior, mottled amber rim

1989
hand-built colored clay with oxide burnished into the surface, twice fired 5½ h × 7¾ dia in (14 × 20 cm)
estimate: $3,000–5,000
result: $10,795
follow artist
own a similar item?
free evaluation

Signed to underside ‘JL’. This work is registered in the artist's records as JL-141.
provenance: Collection of Arthur J. Williams
exhibited: Graham Gallery, New York, 1990

This work will preview in New York and ship from Lambertville, New Jersey.

print

There is visible evidence of decay all around us. The landscape and world we inhabit are in a constant state of change. When clay is fired you can create a lasting image, capturing a moment in time.

Jennifer Lee

A Constant Craving for Art

The Collection of Arthur J. Williams

Arthur J. Williams

We are honored to present works from the Collection of Arthur J. Williams (1936–2021), a man who lived a life dedicated to, and surrounded by, the arts.

Williams began his career in the mailroom at CBS before working in production and editing TV advertisements. He founded Editing Concepts Inc. in 1970, of which he became Chairman of the Board, and was instrumental in expanding the company to six divisions all related to the film and video industry. He was a founding member of the Association of Independent Creative Editors and served as its president for a time. Williams’s success in the media world afforded him the freedom to follow his passion for the arts, and he became a respected member of the International Academy of Ceramics (Geneva, Switzerland) and the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts (Newcastle, Maine). Additionally, he was on the board of the Craft Alliance of the 52nd St. YWCA, where he curated a number of exhibits for the Elsa Mott Gallery, and he conceptualized the Museum of Ceramic Art - New York, an important virtual platform which celebrates the art of ceramics.  

“I am a clay addict. My fixes come in big and small, bright and demure and always quench my need temporarily. Or should I call it a sweet tooth that has a constant craving?...As a collector of clay objects, I am at once picky and open to what shares my home. An artwork has to show creativity, sparks of ingenuity and passion.”

A passionate collector and voracious reader, Williams remarked in a 2000 interview: “Educating oneself is the most exciting thing if not the most important aspect of collecting. Without knowledge, you can’t grow.” His genuine curiosity about art led him to acquire a diverse range of works from Chinese Export Ware and Pennsylvania Red Ware to sculptures by Chakaia Booker and contemporary ceramics from artists around the world. He found great joy in seeking out new pieces and in a note from his personal archive, we are given a wonderful glimpse into his thought process as a collector: “I am a clay addict. My fixes come in big and small, bright and demure and always quench my need temporarily. Or should I call it a sweet tooth that has a constant craving?...As a collector of clay objects, I am at once picky and open to what shares my home. An artwork has to show creativity, sparks of ingenuity and passion.” Williams had a prescient eye for art, especially of the clay variety, and assembled what became one of the most important, and comprehensive, contemporary ceramics collections of the present day.

Jennifer Lee b. 1956

follow artist

Jennifer Lee was born in Scotland and studied ceramics and tapestry at Edinburgh College of Art in the late 1970s prior to conducting research on South-West Indian prehistoric ceramics and visiting contemporary West Coast pottery during an eight-month scholarship to the United States. In the early 1980s, she earned her Master in Ceramics at the Royal College of Art in London, eventually settling in the city where she remains living and working to this day.

Lee’s work is entirely hand-built, utilizing ancient techniques of pinching and coiling, and she colors her pieces by mixing metallic oxides into the clay before shaping it. Her materials and methods are central to her practice and the resulting works, as she explained in an interview: “My work is chiefly concerned with my interaction with the materials in my studio. The process is very important to me. Constant testing of materials is imperative to the ongoing development of my work.” Her innovative use of clay and oxides, and an absence of any sort of glaze, create subtle, distinctive haloes along the lines and shapes that weave around her forms and create a sense of movement, almost as if one is viewing a slice of the earth’s crust suspended in time.

In a career that now spans over forty years, Lee has exhibited internationally—including retrospectives at both the Röhsska Museet, Gothenburg (1993) and the Aberdeen Museum and Art Gallery, Scotland (1994)—and her work is represented in major public collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. She won the LOEWE Craft Prize in 2018 and was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2021 for her service to ceramics. Lee’s dedication to her craft and her exceptional creations have cemented her place among the greatest British ceramic artists, alongside luminaries such as Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, and Bernard Leach.

Auction Results Jennifer Lee

Jennifer Lee

Asymmetric banded, dark base, tilted rim

estimate: $10,000–15,000

result: $35,280

Jennifer Lee

Pale, olive haloed bands, coned shelf rim

estimate: $8,000–12,000

result: $35,280

Jennifer Lee

Blue, olive and shale, speckles, emerging rim

estimate: $10,000–15,000

result: $30,240

Jennifer Lee

Sandy pink, asymmetric tilted rim, speckled bands, bleeding bands

estimate: $10,000–15,000

result: $20,160

103