Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie | 1895 - 1985

These lines written by Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie near the begining of her career contain the essence of what she strove to achieve in her work. Rejecting what she described as 'all the mutton fat and glitter', simplicity and naturalness were qualities she preferred. When she first started potting in the 1920s studio potters were few and far between, but despite the odds, not least her own self depreciation, Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie can now be recognised as a pioneer in her field having devoted most of her long and active life to the study of glazes. 

Barley Roscoe

From the introduction of Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie: A Potter's Life 1895 - 1985. 

Crafts Council, in association with the Craft Study Centre, 1986. 

Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie’s bottles and bowls are one of the quietest and loveliest expressions of the modern potter’s art. Pleydell-Bouverie, or simply ‘Beano’ as she was affectionately known to many, was an early student at the Leach Pottery, St Ives, and from the outset her style synthesised the influence of Far Eastern pottery with an understated sense of the English landscape, its colours and textures. She was a pioneer of locally-sourced ash glazes, their sensitive greens, greys and creams often gently crackled, perhaps combined with fluting and incising. The language was economic, Pleydell-Bouverie happy to evoke the simplicity of rounded stones and softly coloured mosses. Pleydell-Bouverie (1895-1985) worked initially at Coleshill in Berkshire, and latterly had a workshop at Kilmington Manor in Wiltshire.

David Whiting

'Beano [as she became known] demanded nothing from her material, nor told them what to do, but played with them, and accepted and used what they had to offer, weeding out what she did not enjoy, and all the time relishing in the making and in the finding out'. 

Richard Batterham on Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie

Page 24 of Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie: A Potter's Life 1895 - 1985. 

Crafts Council  in association with the Crafts Study Centre, 1986.