Grant pledge to a PhD student at Cambridge University

Helen Ritchie is Senior Curator Modern & Contemporary Applied Arts at the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge and responsible for researching, interpreting and curating modern and contemporary European Applied Arts. Her research interests include contemporary crafts, design post-1850, British Studio Pottery, Artist/Designer metalwork and jewellery and the intersection between applied and fine art during the interwar period. 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.

She is also a part-time doctoral student in the Department of History of Art at the University of Cambridge, researching the studio ceramics of Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie (1895–1985) and Norah Braden (1901–2001). She is supervised by Prof. Rosalind Polly Blakesley.  

Helen was the sole curator of the exhibition Designers and Jewellery 1850-1940: Jewellery and Metalwork from The Fitzwilliam Museum (2018) and author of the accompanying catalogue. She was the organising curator of exhibitions, Magdalene Odundo in Cambridge (2021-22), Things of Beauty Growing: British Studio Pottery, in partnership with Yale Center for British Art (2018) and Flux: Parian Ware at The Fitzwilliam Museum, in partnership with artist Matt Smith (2018). She has worked with a number of contemporary artists, including Jennifer Lee OBE, Elspeth Owen and Matt Smith. In 2022, her exhibition Magdalene Odundo in Cambridge (curated with the artist) was awarded the Association for Art History Curatorial Prize.

Helen is a Trustee of the North West Essex Collection Trust (on display at the Fry Art Gallery, Saffron Walden), a member of Clare Hall’s Ceramics Management Board and an accredited Arts Society lecturer