Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie was born in Coleshill, Berkshire in 1895. After serving in the Red Cross in France during the First World War, she studied the arts, including pottery, at night school in London in 1921-23. She met Bernard Leach in 1923 at an exhibition at the Paterson Gallery and, finally, convinced him to take her on as a student. She joined the Leach Pottery in St. Ives in 1924, as Shoji Hamada was leaving but Michael Cardew, Tsurunosuke Matsubayashi, Edgar Skinner and George Dunn were working. After her year training at the pottery she returned to Coleshill and set up her own workshop, building a wood firing kiln with the help of Matsubayashi. She was joined in 1928 by fellow potter Norah Braden and they went on to produce independent work over the next eight years, drawing both on the orientalist ideas of Bernard Leach and the modernist values of minimalism and ‘truth to materials’. They experimented with producing a wide range of ash-glazes using wood from the local area and kept careful records of the recipes, marking each pot accordingly.
Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie's pots are enormously tactile. Her beautifully controlled ash glazes have wonderful qualities - they flow over the gouged clay surface beneath, often making the vessels look like they have been dipped into the most delicious vanilla sauce.
Her work is held in many Public and Private collections around the world.
Stoneware, ash glaze, circa 1930. Impressed ‘KPB’ monogram and glaze code around the footing. 9cm wide 6cm tall
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Stoneware, ash glaze with sgraffito decoration. 8cm tall
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