Gerry Williams was born in India in 1926, where he grew up in the last years of the British Raj. His parents were American missionaries running a school in Bengal. Williams, who was partially influenced by his parents and Gandhi (whom his father was fortunate to meet), grew up with firm moral ethics, leading him to embrace pacifism. Returning to the United States to attend Cornell College in Iowa, Williams refused to serve in World War II as a conscientious objector and left college for several years in alternative war service. Williams discovered pottery in the late 1940s while living in Maine. In 1949, Williams moved to Concord, and with the assistance of David Campbell, the director of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen (1938-1962), he started his pottery business and eventually built his own studio and home in Dunbarton, New Hampshire. Not only a successful potter, Williams founded The Studio Potter magazine in 1972. Published for working craftsmen, The Studio Potter became one of the most influential art publications in the U.S. Williams received the American Craft Council Gold Medal for Publications in 1986, was selected as New Hampshire’s first Artist Laureate, and was honored with the state’s Lotte Jacobi Living Treasure Award in 2005. Gerry Williams died on August 25, 2014, in New Hampshire.