Ruth King
Some potters begin with a lump of clay; Ruth King begins with a sheet. For more than 40 years, the Yorkshire-based ceramicist has cut, folded, and joined soft slabs of clay into vessels that seem to gather space rather than simply occupy it. Trained at Camberwell School of Art in the 1970s, Ruth developed a hand-building practice that rejects the wheel in favor of careful construction, allowing subtle asymmetry to emerge deliberately by hand. A final salt firing completes the conversation, as swirling vapors settle across the surface, leaving nuanced textures and shifts of color unique to each piece. Collected by institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Museum of Scotland, Ruth King's vessels exist somewhere between pottery and sculpture.
Photographer credits: Ben Boswell; Christian Barnett
Some potters begin with a lump of clay; Ruth King begins with a sheet. For more than 40 years, the Yorkshire-based ceramicist has cut, folded, and joined soft slabs of clay into vessels that seem to gather space rather than simply occupy it. Trained at Camberwell School of Art in the 1970s, Ruth developed a hand-building practice that rejects the wheel in favor of careful construction, allowing subtle asymmetry to emerge deliberately by hand. A final salt firing completes the conversation, as swirling vapors settle across the surface, leaving nuanced textures and shifts of color unique to each piece. Collected by institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Museum of Scotland, Ruth King's vessels exist somewhere between pottery and sculpture.
Photographer credits: Ben Boswell; Christian Barnett
Meet The Maker:
Ruth King
Some potters begin with a lump of clay; Ruth King begins with a sheet. For more than 40 years, the Yorkshire-based ceramicist has cut, folded, and joined soft slabs of clay into vessels that seem to gather space rather than simply occupy it. Trained at Camberwell School of Art in the 1970s, Ruth developed a hand-building practice that rejects the wheel in favor of careful construction, allowing subtle asymmetry to emerge deliberately by hand. A final salt firing completes the conversation, as swirling vapors settle across the surface, leaving nuanced textures and shifts of color unique to each piece. Collected by institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Museum of Scotland, Ruth King's vessels exist somewhere between pottery and sculpture.
Photographer credits: Ben Boswell; Christian Barnett