About

Jennifer Lee was 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 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.

Lee's pots are  hand built and she has developed a method of colouring them by mixing metallic oxides into the clay before making.

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 2018 the Victoria & Albert Museum purchased a fourth ceramic work and a drawing for their collections.

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.

She returned to Japan in autumn 2013 to take part in the International Ceramic Art Festival in Sasama, Shizuoka. In 2014, 2015 and 2018 Lee was guest artist in residence at Shigaraki Ceramic Culture Park and in 2019 she was guest artist in residence at Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art.

In 2018 Lee won the LOEWE Craft Prize, an award initiated by Jonathan Anderson. Helen Mirren presented the prize at an awards ceremony at The Design Museum in London.

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. In 2019 Lee had a major exhibition of ceramics and drawings at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, Jennifer Lee: the potter’s space, curated by Sarah Griffin, exhibition design by Jamie Fobert.

In 2021 she was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for service to ceramics.

Jennifer Lee lives and works in London and exhibits worldwide.




Photos: Jake Tilson.