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Ruth Duckworth

Ruth Duckworth

Ruth Duckworth Portrait

Born in 1919 in Hamburg, Germany, Ruth Duckworth was a sculptor and educator. After first working with stone, Ruth Duckworth turned to ceramics - her primary medium for the remainder of her career. Duckworth’s art is perhaps most distinctive for its many permutations. Her sculpture, in both ceramic and bronze, ranges in scale from the intimate and delicate to the monumental. Duckworth was educated at the Liverpool School of Art, the Hammersmith School of Art in London, and the Central School of Arts and Crafts - where she also taught from 1959 to 1964. She attracted international attention with her organic forms, which led to a teaching position at the University of Chicago. In 1977 she left teaching to focus solely on her studio work. Her work has been the subject of many retrospective exhibitions around the world, and she has been widely collected by museums throughout Europe, Japan, and the United States. Ruth Duckworth received the American Craft Council’s Gold Medal in 1997. She died in 2009.