Hans Coper was born to a Jewish father and gentile mother in Chemnitz, Germany in 1920. In 1939, aged nineteen, he fled Nazi Germany and resettled in England, where he remained for the rest of his life. After securing a position in the studio of Austrian émigrée, ceramicist Lucie Rie in 1946, he quickly became a well-known ceramicist in his own right, producing functional rather than decorative objects; Coper was the first living potter honoured with a solo exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Ceramicist Hans Coper was born to a Jewish father and gentile mother in Chemnitz, Germany in 1920 and grew up in Reichenbach, where his father owned a textile mill. Following the rise of Hitler in 1933 and the introduction of anti-Semitic legislation, the business was forced to close and the family moved to Dresden, and later Leipzig, where Coper's' father committed suicide when Hans was only 16. Coper subsequently studied textile engineering until, fearful of his identity as a ‘Mischling' (part Jew), he fled to England, sponsored by an earlier émigré (probably a business connection of his father's), and supported by the Quaker Society of Friends. He arrived in London with little money in early 1939.
Following the introduction of mass internment for so-called 'enemy aliens' in June 1940, Coper was interned in Huyton camp, outside Liverpool. Despite poor living conditions, he made valuable artistic connections, including with German artist Jupp Dernbach-Mayen. After six weeks, he was transferred to a camp in Sherbrooke, Canada – also a hub of artistic activity, where he became known for drawing portraits of fellow internees; here he met Polish artist Fritz Wolf, who introduced Coper to modern art and encouraged him to become a sculptor. After briefly joining the Pioneer Corps, Coper returned to London, where he met William Ohly, gallerist and founder of the Abbey Arts Centre in New Barnet, who introduced him to Lucie Rie, a Viennese refugee potter known for employing émigré artists in her Paddington studio in Albion Mews. Rie took on Coper despite his lack of experience and with her he produced ceramic buttons until the end of the war. On her advice he took lessons at Woolwich Polytechnic, mastering pottery techniques in days, rejoining Rie's studio with greater responsibility and becoming her studio partner in 1946 – also reconnecting with Dernbach-Mayen. By 1948, Coper was primarily occupied with domestic stoneware, cups, and saucers designed by Rie, gaining visibility beyond Albion Mews: Viennese-born, Henry Rothschild, influential in contemporary crafts, bought his bowl Laurens to sell at his Primavera Gallery, while curator Muriel Rose began promoting his work, later featuring Coper in her book Artist Potters in England (Faber and Faber, 1970). Coper's pottery was first exhibited jointly with Rie and sculptor Audrey Blackman by Ohly at his Berkeley Galleries in 1950. Over the years, Berkeley Galleries would hold several joint exhibitions for Coper and Rie. In 1951 Coper's domestic stoneware was featured in the Festival of Britain and his pottery was shown at the Milan Triennale, reviewed (along with Rie's work) in Architectural Review. At this point, Coper began to experiment further with ceramics, drawing inspiration from twentieth-century sculptors, including Hans Arp and Constantin Brâncuși, and from ancient Egyptian, Cycladic, Etruscan, and Neolithic art at the British Museum, which became enduring influences. In 1958, Coper left Rie’s studio to focus on his own work, although they remained lifelong friends; in the same year he was naturalised and, shortly after, held his first solo exhibition at the Primavera Gallery. After hearing about the exhibition, educator Henry Morris offered Coper a large studio at Digswell House in Hertfordshire, and he left London in early 1959 to experiment further with functional ceramics. In 1960 Coper opened his studio to the public; in The Observer, Patiente Grey described Coper's unglazed stoneware pots as 'powerful and strange', in a studio with '[...] shelves alive with these forms, perfect shapes in dull metallic stony black [...] like a galaxy of Platonic ideas which had miraculously intruded into life: a new race of pots' (Grey 1960, p. 22). In 1962, Coper was commissioned to create three seven-foot candle holders for the altar of Coventry Cathedral. Coper had begun teaching at Camberwell School of Art the previous year, at the urging of Rie, remaining for ten years, and also taught at the Royal College of Art from 1966 to 1975. One of his students, Elizabeth Fritsch, recalled: 'His teaching had the same integrity and strength as had his pots; graceful, direct, precisely and sensitively tuned […]' (Birks 1983, p. 61). In 1967 Coper moved to Somerset with his wife, photographer Jane Gate. In 1969, he became the first living potter to be honoured with a solo exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Over 100 pots were displayed, representing different facets of his work and including, for the first time, the attenuated vessels on bases which were known as the ‘Cycladic’ pots. By the mid-1970s, however, after experiencing complications arising from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), his condition gradually deteriorated until he was unable to use his hands. Coper died in Frome, Somerset in 1981. His work is in UK collections, including the Hepworth Wakefield; Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead; Victoria and Albert Museum and British Museum, London. In 2020, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford held a retrospective of Coper's work, marking the centenary of his birth.