Alumni Festival – talk by Helen Ritchie
As part of the University’s Alumni Festival, we are delighted to host a talk by Helen Ritchie, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Applied Arts at the Fitzwilliam Museum.
Title: ‘They combined and made fine pots together’: the partnership of Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie and Norah Braden
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 pottery that she shared with female partner and fellow studio potter, Norah Braden (1901–2001).
At the forefront of the British studio pottery movement, the pair fired their handmade stoneware pots in a wood-fired kiln of Japanese design and decorated them with delicately-hued glazes, made using plant ash derived 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 lecture will explore the experimental nature of the pots made by Pleydell-Bouverie and Braden and examine the reception of their work. It will consider how these women reconfigured ‘country house’ living in their quest for modernity, making space for their own queer, independent lives and artistic practice.