Berry Bate is a native of Bronxville, New York. She graduated from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina with a Bachelor of Music degree in voice in 1975. It was during those college years that she found her true calling of working with metal.

After teaching music in a one room schoolhouse in Jackson Hole, Wyoming for a year, and related arts in New Jersey for another, she found her true home in the mountains of western North Carolina.  She decided to attend graduate school at Western Carolina University, majoring in sculpture. She also attended the John Campbell Folk School, at this time, where she learned the art of blacksmithing.

Berry started her first business, Fire Form in 1979 in a chicken coop in Waynesville, North Carolina. In 1980 she moved to Asheville and founded Asheville Ironworks, Inc. One of her first challenges was the fabrication of the primary fence atop the pinnacle of Chimney Rock State Park, where she and her crew had to rappel off the edge of the rock in order to do the installation. Another early achievement was being a consultant for the restoration of the Statue of Liberty in 1986.

For two decades she worked at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville creating various architectural pieces, including a main gate, garden wall railings, and numerous chandeliers.

In 1995 Berry sold Asheville Ironworks, Inc. and founded Sculpture by Berry Bate. For 20 more years she and her talented assistants created beautiful artistic architectural ironwork and sculptures in iron, bronze and copper. Berry is now winding down an illustrious career and planning her next adventure.

Her studios are located in Asheville and Lake Toxaway, North Carolina.