Ruth Duckworth
The vessel form in its distended hollowness is both a metaphor and a vehicle for an organic feeling that runs through much of [Duckworth’s] work and reflects her own deep empathy for the natural world.
— Martin Puryear
In the twenty years since the last major publication on the work of Ruth Duckworth, much has changed in how the field of ceramics is understood in relation to the realms of fine art and craft. Always regarding herself as a sculptor rather than a potter or ceramicist, Duckworth was ahead of her time, insisting that her work be considered in the same light and exhibited alongside that of her contemporaries working in bronze (which she also used occasionally), stone, welded metal, and other traditional sculptural media.
The discourse around ceramics has now caught up to her, and Ruth Duckworth includes an extensive presentation of her work in porcelain and stoneware, revealing the continued and growing influence of this trailblazing artist. As Emmanuelle Cooper wrote in the artist’s obituary: “In both her life and work, Duckworth’s background was one of non-conformity. In Germany, as a young girl, she risked prosecution by defacing a Nazi monument and resented being unable to attend art school because her father was Jewish. Most challenging of all was her determination to gain international respectability as a sculptor working primarily in clay.”
Ruth Duckworth includes a foreword and afterword by fellow artists Martin Puryear and Marie Herwald Hermann, along with a deeply humanizing conversation between curator Jo Lauria and Thea Burger, Duckworth’s longtime friend, agent, and representative of her estate.
The vessel form in its distended hollowness is both a metaphor and a vehicle for an organic feeling that runs through much of [Duckworth’s] work and reflects her own deep empathy for the natural world.
— Martin Puryear
In the twenty years since the last major publication on the work of Ruth Duckworth, much has changed in how the field of ceramics is understood in relation to the realms of fine art and craft. Always regarding herself as a sculptor rather than a potter or ceramicist, Duckworth was ahead of her time, insisting that her work be considered in the same light and exhibited alongside that of her contemporaries working in bronze (which she also used occasionally), stone, welded metal, and other traditional sculptural media.
The discourse around ceramics has now caught up to her, and Ruth Duckworth includes an extensive presentation of her work in porcelain and stoneware, revealing the continued and growing influence of this trailblazing artist. As Emmanuelle Cooper wrote in the artist’s obituary: “In both her life and work, Duckworth’s background was one of non-conformity. In Germany, as a young girl, she risked prosecution by defacing a Nazi monument and resented being unable to attend art school because her father was Jewish. Most challenging of all was her determination to gain international respectability as a sculptor working primarily in clay.”
Ruth Duckworth includes a foreword and afterword by fellow artists Martin Puryear and Marie Herwald Hermann, along with a deeply humanizing conversation between curator Jo Lauria and Thea Burger, Duckworth’s longtime friend, agent, and representative of her estate.
The vessel form in its distended hollowness is both a metaphor and a vehicle for an organic feeling that runs through much of [Duckworth’s] work and reflects her own deep empathy for the natural world.
— Martin Puryear
In the twenty years since the last major publication on the work of Ruth Duckworth, much has changed in how the field of ceramics is understood in relation to the realms of fine art and craft. Always regarding herself as a sculptor rather than a potter or ceramicist, Duckworth was ahead of her time, insisting that her work be considered in the same light and exhibited alongside that of her contemporaries working in bronze (which she also used occasionally), stone, welded metal, and other traditional sculptural media.
The discourse around ceramics has now caught up to her, and Ruth Duckworth includes an extensive presentation of her work in porcelain and stoneware, revealing the continued and growing influence of this trailblazing artist. As Emmanuelle Cooper wrote in the artist’s obituary: “In both her life and work, Duckworth’s background was one of non-conformity. In Germany, as a young girl, she risked prosecution by defacing a Nazi monument and resented being unable to attend art school because her father was Jewish. Most challenging of all was her determination to gain international respectability as a sculptor working primarily in clay.”
Ruth Duckworth includes a foreword and afterword by fellow artists Martin Puryear and Marie Herwald Hermann, along with a deeply humanizing conversation between curator Jo Lauria and Thea Burger, Duckworth’s longtime friend, agent, and representative of her estate.
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Artwork by Ruth Duckworth
Foreword by Martin Puryear
Afterword by Marie Herwald Hermann
Conversation with Jo Lauria and Thea BurgerHardcover
9.75 x 12.5 inches
264 pages / 140 images
ISBN: 9798890180827 -
Ruth Duckworth (1919-2009) was a British sculptor who was best known for her smooth ceramic works of abstract forms derived from nature. Finding much of her inspiration from Bronze Age Cycladic sculptures, Duckworth’s oeuvre have elongated silhouettes with slight details suggesting the face and limbs. Born Ruth Windmüller in Hamburg, Germany to a Jewish father and Christian mother, she was forced to leave the country in 1936 due to Nazi restrictions on Jewish students, studying instead at the Liverpool College of Art in the United Kingdom. She initially worked as a tombstone engraver in England, and in 1964 moved to the US to teach at the University of Chicago. Her works are in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA: and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, among others. Duckworth died in Chicago, IL, where she had spent the last 45 years of her life.