Jennifer Lee

Jennifer Elizabeth Lee (born 1956) is a Scottish ceramic artist with an international reputation. Lee's distinctive pots are hand built using traditional pinch and coil methods. She has developed a method of colouring the pots by mixing metallic oxides into the clay before making. Her work is held in over forty museums and public collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2018 Lee won the Loewe Craft Prize, an award initiated by Jonathan Anderson in 2017. The prize was presented to her at an awards ceremony at The Design Museum in London. Early life and education Lee was born in North East Scotland, daughter of a farmer. She was educated in Aberdeenshire. In 1974 Lee started a course in physiotherapy at Woolmanhill Hospital, Aberdeen. Lee's interest in ceramics began after meeting Robin Welch in Suffolk in 1974. She worked with Robin and Jenny Welch during the summers of 1975 and 1976 as a studio assistant. From 1975 to 1979 she studied ceramics and tapestry at Edinburgh College of Art under the tutelage of Tony Franks. On completing her studies she was awarded the David Gordon Memorial Trust Prize and Andrew Grant Travelling Scholarship. In 1979-80 she spent eight months travelling in the USA where she researched South-West Native American prehistoric ceramics and visited pueblos. She met with contemporary West Coast potters, including Peter Voulkos, Paul Soldner, Ron Nagle, Michael Frimkess and Viola Frey. In New Mexico she visited Ken Price and Rick Dillingham in their studios and in Oregon she took part in workshops with Paul Soldner, Stephen De Staebler and Betty Feves. From 1980 to 1983 she studied ceramics at the Royal College of Art in London. Her tutors there included Professor Lord David Queensberry, Philip Rawson, Eduardo Paolozzi and Gillian Lowndes.