Robert C. Turner was born in Port Washington, New York, in 1913 and attended Swarthmore College (BA, 1936). He went on to study painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and earned a MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1949. After initiating the pottery program at Black Mountain College, North Carolina (1949-1951), Turner returned to Alfred Station, where he established himself as a studio potter. He joined the Alfred University faculty in 1958 until his retirement in 1979 as professor emeritus of ceramic art. While at Alfred, Turner was honored with the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (1974) and the Charles Fergus Binns Medal (2000). Though his early work emphasized the function of pottery and ceramics, his later work starting in the ‘60s began to investigate the philosophies of the vessel based on his travels to the American Southwest, Italy, and Africa. A retrospective of his work was organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum in 1985 and toured until 1987. Other honors include: an honorary doctorate in fine art from Swarthmore College (1987) and the Member of Honor of the International Academy of Ceramics (2005). Robert Turner became an American Craft Council Gold Medalist in 1993 and died on July 26, 2005.