‘A student at Camberwell School of Arts and Craft during the 1970s, Ruth King’s career spans almost thirty years throughout which time her work has shown a thoughtful observational approach and an undiminished dedication to the art and process of making.

The making of a pot is a tactile experience and as she works she cradles and turns each one in her lap, coaxing their embryonic forms by gradual manipulation to gently mould and shape. Wrapped and folded from a sheet of clay, each pot begins from a similar starting point but each will evolve differently. Some are reminiscent of cushions or pillows or slippers…personal and intimate objects. Held tenderly by the potter as they are made, these pots feel resonant with memory and seem to invite our touch.

Her newest work is a culmination of years of experimentation. She uses a gas fired salt kiln and her work demonstrates a hard-won and impressive control of a notoriously unpredictable medium. Consigning these carefully constructed objects to the rigours of a salt firing demands the courage to risk distortion and failure - but her nerve, her experience and her extraordinary patience have resulted in some very unusual and exciting work.

These new pots are cool and sophisticated, there is finesse in the surfaces and glazes have become richer, achieving a subtle range of colour ranging through soft iridescent greens, golds and browns to black. With softly rounded openings and curving sides, their volume seems almost to have been inflated by their maker’s breath. These pots are poetic…we respond to their lightness of touch and contained stillness- yet what also emerges is an impression of movement, a mercurial fluidity.

Ruth King’s pots are striking and not in all the more usual ways; they possess a quiet dynamic and their constrained liveliness provokes contrasting reactions…but perhaps most of all they invite quiet contemplation.'

Adapted from an article by Lyn Wait.

'A Quiet Dynamic' - article