Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie

Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie studied at Central School of Art and Design. The recorded working language is English. Work by Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie is recorded in the collections of National Gallery of Victoria, Tate, Design Museum Den Bosch and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

• Name — Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie • Born — 7 June 1895 • Birthplace — Coleshill, Oxfordshire, England • Died — January 1985 (age 89) • Place of death — Kilmington, Wiltshire, England

Pleydell-Bouverie was born into an aristocratic family at the Coleshill estate near Faringdon, then in Berkshire. Her parents were Duncombe Pleydell-Bouverie and his wife Maria Eleanor, the daughter of Sir Edward Hulse, 5th Baronet; her paternal grandfather was Jacob Pleydell-Bouverie, 4th Earl of Radnor. Pleydell-Bouverie was the youngest of three children growing up in a 17th-century stately home surrounded by blue-and-white and famille verte Chinese porcelain. It was during childhood holidays playing on a muddy beach at Weston-super-Mare with her siblings that she was first introduced to clay. She died at Kilmington, Wiltshire, in January 1985 at the age of 89.

Whilst living in London in the 1920s, her interest in pottery began when she visited Roger Fry at his Omega Workshops and saw examples of his work, which led to her attending evening classes at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London to study pottery under Dora Billington. In 1924, Pleydell-Bouverie was taken on by Bernard Leach at his pottery in St. Ives. She remained at the Leach Pottery for a year and learnt alongside Michael Cardew, Shoji Hamada and Tsuronosuke Matsubayashi (known as Matsu). She did the necessary odd jobs at the pottery whilst observing technical lectures from Matsu and was soon given the nickname of "Beano". • Illustration — Untitled Fluted Jar by Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie from the W. A. Ismay collection at York Art Gallery In 1925, Pleydell-Bouverie started her first pottery with a wood-fired kiln in the grounds of her family estate at Coleshill, where she was joined for eight years by fellow potter Norah Braden. They had an intimate relationship and although Norah had to leave to care for her mother she would return for holidays. They used ash glazes, prepared from wood and vegetables grown on the estate. Tsurunosuke Matsubayashi, a skilled Japanese kiln maker, had built a two chambered wood fired kiln there. The kiln could only be used a few times a year as it used two tonnes of timber to fire it for the 36 hours required. Whilst the kiln was being fired the potters had to watch it around the clock in makeshift beds to obtain the long slow firing they desired. In 1946, after the family sold Coleshill House, she moved to her second pottery, in a malthouse attached to the 17th-century manor house at Kilmington in Wiltshire, where she worked until her death in 1985. Here she used first an oil-fired kiln, and then an electric one. After World War II, Pleydell-Bouverie sold her ceramic work at low prices, possibly because she had private means.

The authorities additionally record the headings Katherine Playdell-Bouverie, Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie and Katherine Harriot Duncombe Pleydell-Bouverie. Her recorded language was English. She was the child of Duncombe Pleydell-Bouverie and Maria Eleanor Hulse. Recognition and collections.