Ruth Duckworth

German/American
(1919–2009)

Untitled
1992

Porcelain
5.5 x 5.125 x 4.75 in.
Gift of the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation
2000.14

Ruth Duckworth’s Untitled demonstrates the impulse toward modernist sculpture in American ceramics. It embraces a minimalist, handbuilt aesthetic that showcases the smooth, unglazed white porcelain surfaces. The abstract object inhabits a middle ground between vessel and sculpture. Its minimalist style highlights both the fragility and strength of her materials. Despite her work being disliked by the prominent British potter Bernard Leach, due to her break with the vessel tradition, her style was deeply influential on sculptural ceramics in the 1970s.

Ruth Duckworth was born in 1919 in Hamburg, Germany. Unable to attend university in Germany due to restrictions imposed by the Nazi government, Duckworth left for the United Kingdom. There she studied at the Liverpool College of Art, the Hammersmith School of Art, and in the studio of Lucie Rie. Encouraged by Rie to gain more experience in ceramics, Duckworth attended the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. In 1966 she moved to the United States to teach at the University of Chicago, where she introduced a postwar European sensibility to her students and encouraged the development of American sculptural ceramics.

Matthew Limb

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This object was included in the following exhibitions:

• Ceramic Case 11: Women, White, and Porcelain (Left and Right Sides) , 8/21/2012 - 5/8/2014
• Women, Surrealism, and Abstraction , 8/25/2020 - 7/9/2022
• Unearthed , 8/23/2022 - 5/14/2023

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