Born in 1925 in Hastings-on- Hudson, New York, William Daley is a beloved mentor and leading figure in contemporary ceramics. His distinctive unglazed stoneware pieces focus on the essence of form, possessing a complex beauty in their deceptive simplicity. Daley taught for almost four decades at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, retiring in 1990. His work has been the subject of two traveling retrospectives and is in many private and public collections, including the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; the Everson Museum, Syracuse, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He has been named an honorary member of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, elected a fellow of the American Craft Council, and in 2004 he received the Distinguished Educators Award from the James Renwick Alliance. William Daley lives and works in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. He received the American Craft Council’s Gold Medal in 2003.