Lee, Jennifer

First name: 
Jennifer
Initials: 
J.
Surname: 
Lee
Year of birth: 
1956
Birthplace: 
Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Country of birth: 
Great Brittain
Working period: 
1983
CV: 

Jennifer Lee is born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1956. From 1975 to 1979 she studied ceramics and tapestry at Edinburgh College of Art. She then spent eight months (1979-1980) on a travelling scholarship to the USA where she researched South-West Indian prehistoric ceramics and visited contemporary West Coast potters. From 1980 to 1983 she continued her work in ceramics at the Royal College of Art in London. Since then her travels have included trips to Egypt, India, Australia and Japan as well as Europe and the USA. Jennifer Lee lives and works in London and regularly exhibits in London, Sydney and Los Angeles.

Lee's pots are hand built and she has developed a method of colouring them by mixing metallic oxides into the clay before making. Jennifer Lee has had retrospective exhibitions of her work at the Röhsska Musset in Göteborg, Sweden in 1993, and the Aberdeen Museum and Art Gallery, Scotland in 1994. Her work is represented in major public collections worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Philadelphia Museum of Art and Los Angeles County Museum. In 2008 the Victoria & Albert Museum purchased a third work for their collection. In 2009 she was invited by Issey Miyake to exhibit at his foundation 21_21 Design Sight for the exhibition 'U-Tsu-Wa'. The installation was designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando - her pots appeared to float on a vast pool of water behind which cascaded a thirty metre waterfall. Jennifer Lee returns to Japan in autumn 2013 to take part in the International Ceramic Art Festival in Sasama, Shizuoka and she has been invited to be guest artist in residence at Shigaraki Ceramic Culture Park for two months in 2014 (text: www.jenniferlee.co.uk).

Portraits (all by photographer Jake Tilson); 'Flashed Amber' pot, 1993 (source MAAK Auction London); two pots (source Ceramics Now); 4 pots, 2009 (photographer Hiroshi Iwasaki); pot 2007 (source Galerie Besson).