Ray Rogers (1935- ) was born in Waitati, New Zealand, in 1935. He started potting for fun in 1969 when he was running a petrochemical sales enterprise in Auckland. Largely self-taught, he held his first solo exhibition in Auckland in 1974. After a visit to California in 1980, he became interested in pit-firing and spent the rest of his working life exploring this technique and teaching it to others. In 1983, he won the Fletcher Brownbuilt International Award and completed a nine-month residency with the Potters' Society of Australia. He moved permanently to Australia in 1986, basing himself in Sydney, and spending time working at the La Paloma Pottery in Newtown. During the early 1990s he started to use silver and copper lustres to provide a lustrous surface to his forms. In 1997 he demonstrated his firing techniques at the 1997 International Ceramics Festival at Aberystwyth in Wales. In 2003, he ceased his involvement with ceramics. His works are signed with his incised name.