Born in Hamburg, Germany, Ruth came to Liverpool in 1936 as a refugee from the Nazi regime to join her sister, and to study at the Liverpool School of Art. It was only after the war that she became really fascinated with ceramics and in 1956 she started studying pottery at the Central School of Art and Crafts.
In 1964 she accepted a one-year teaching appointment at the University of Chicago but continued in this faculty post for 13 years and continued living in the United States until her death in 2009.
Her work over the past five decades has contributed significantly to the development of Modernist style in sculpture, and her work reflects that radical way of working and thinking. Ruth shaped new ways of thinking about ceramics and brought an aesthetic rigour to her refined vessel forms, her figurative sculptures and installations. Most of her sculptures are inspired by the abstracted forms of nature. Many are shaped in stone, porcelain and bronze. Her most celebrated works however, have been in clay.
According to Emmanuel Cooper, a British ceramist and an editor of Ceramic Review, she was "a great original. Pioneering her own path within ceramics, brilliantly exploring the idea of the figure, the vessel and the more abstract form.”
 |
| 'Clouds Over Lake Michigan' |
Her most famous large-scale work is 'Clouds Over Lake Michigan', a figurative depiction of the Lake Michigan watershed, which is on display at the Chicago Board Options Exchange Building. In the last decade she completed several monumental bronze sculptures for, among others, the campus of the Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. Duckworth's work is represented in the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection as well as major collections in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
Excerpts from 'Ruth Duckworth: A Life in Clay', the award winning documentary that traces the life of this prolific ceramic sculptor. Directed by Karen Carter.
