Doug Lawrie is an American potter who trained under Paul Soldner in California, then spent 15 years in Japan. He was working near Takeichi Kawai's studio in the Gojozaka area of Kyoto when Les Blakebrough visited there in 1963. In 1969, he joined Blakebrough at Sturt Pottery as a visiting potter, and held an exhibition of his work at the Macquarie Galleries in Sydney the following year. He returned to Australia in 1979 at the invitation of the Potters' Society of Australia to conduct a series of workshops in Toowoomba, Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart, and to exhibit work made by him in Japan at the Macquarie and Blackfriar Galleries in Sydney. In the 1980s, he returned to California.