Richard Ritter Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1940 -

Richard Ritter (born 1940) is an American studio glass artist who lives in North Carolina. Ritter was born in Detroit, but grew up in the then rural Michigan town of Novi. He was inspired to pursue a career in art by his high school art teacher and in 1959 on to study at the Society of Arts and Crafts (later renamed the Center for Creative Studies) in Detroit, Michigan. In 1962, Ritter left school to take a job with an advertising firm, returning in 1968 to the Society of Arts and Crafts to continue his studies and teach advertising there. His first experience with hot glass came in that year, when another instructor, Gilbert Johnson (b. 1930) built a glass workshop at the school. Ritter graduated from the Society of Arts and Crafts in 1969 and went to the Bloomfield Art Association in Birmingham, Michigan, to teach glassblowing. In 1971 he enrolled in a summer session class at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina, where his instructor was glass artist Mark Peiser. Ritter soon afterward took a class with Richard Marquis. He then returned to the Penland school the following summer to teach, and in 1973 was named artist-in-residence at Penland School of Crafts, a position that he held until 1978. He continued to return to the school to teach and give workshops in subsequent years. Richard Ritter has been married to glass artist Jan Williams since 1977