May 1 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Thursday May 1, 2025
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT
Online via Zoom
Part of the Gardiner Signature Lecture Series
The Robert and Marian Cumming Lecture
Speaker: Helen Ritchie, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Applied Arts at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge
Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie (1895–1985), granddaughter of 4th Earl of Radnor, grew up at Coleshill House, one of the grandest country houses in England. Eschewing family tradition, Pleydell-Bouverie established her own home and artistic enterprise on the estate—a cottage and pottery that she shared with female partner and fellow studio potter, Norah Braden (1901–2001). Their handmade stoneware pots were fired in a wood-fired kiln of Japanese design (only the second of its type in Europe) and decorated with delicately-hued glazes, made using plant ash from the estate. Their work was celebrated during the interwar period—praised by critics, exhibited by London gallerists alongside ceramics by their friends Michael Cardew and Bernard Leach, and acquired by collectors and museums.
This talk will explore the experimental nature of their work and consider how these women reconfigured “country house” living in their quest for modernity, making space for their own queer, independent lives and artistic practice.
Bowl
Stoneware with grass ash glaze and brushed iron decoration
Made by Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie at Coleshill, c. 1928–36
From the collections of the Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts, P.74.135
About the Speaker
Helen Ritchie
Helen Ritchie is Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Applied Arts at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, where is responsible for European applied arts made between 1750 and now. She is also a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge, researching the studio ceramics of Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie and Norah Braden. She writes and lectures widely on British studio pottery, contemporary craft, and European design post–1850, and has curated a number of exhibitions, often in collaboration with contemporary artists. In 2024, she was named by Apollo magazine as one of the top “40 under 40” in the world working in the field of craft.