Ruth King |
Ruth King was born in Enfield, Middlesex and trained at Camberwell School of Arts and Craft from 1974-77. She moved to York after four years living and working in London and moved to her current studio near York in 1987.
Ruth's pots are slab-built using a variety of prepared stoneware bodies. The form is then modified after the sections have been assembled giving each pot a unique character. After bisque firing slips are applied before the pots are salt-glazed in a 14cu. ft. propane gas kiln to 1260/80 degrees C.
For the last 26 years Ruth has been hand building individual ceramics. Initially she began coil-building simple but elegant forms on a relatively small scale, then changed to her current construction method of slab-building which increased the scope of the forms and the scale in which she could work. She prefers to produce pieces for people's home so works with a domestic context in mind but without the constraint of an explicit function.
Ruth King is on the Crafts Council Index of Selected Makers and is a Fellow of the Craft Potters Association. Her work is in numerous collections including Nottingham Castle Museum; Royal Museum of Scotland/Edinburgh; York City Art Gallery; Ulster Museum, Belfast; Victoria and Albert Museum, London.