Ruth Duckworth (April 10, 1919 – October 18, 2009) was a modernist sculptor who specialized in ceramics, she worked in stoneware, porcelain, and bronze.

Her work started to fall into a middle ground that wasn't the typical ceramics thrown on a wheel and fired in a kiln or the standard forms of sculpture that used metal, stone or wood.

As described by ceramist Tony Franks, Duckworth's style of "Organic clay had arrived like a harvest festival, and would remain firmly in place well into the '70s".

[8] Her mural series Earth, Water and Sky (1967–68) was commissioned by the university for its Geophysical Sciences Building and included topographical designs based on satellite photographs with porcelain clouds overhead.

[9] She remained in Chicago after retiring from the university in 1977 and moved to a space in the Lakeview neighborhood on the city's North Side, in a former pickle plant.

She had a hole in the floor of her second-floor living quarters, which allowed her to view works in progress in her studio and to envision how they would look on a wall.

[11] Ruth Duckworth's artistic synthesis-combining aesthetic influences from many times and places with her unique contemporary vision-is most masterfully executed in her figural studies grounded in Cycladic formalism.

Her work, Untitled (Mama Pot), was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of the Renwick Gallery's 50th Anniversary Campaign.