Primavera Gallery

Primavera is a fine arts and crafts gallery at 10 King's Parade in Cambridge, England. Henry Rothschild of the Rothschild family founded Primavera in 1945 in Sloane Street, London, in order to promote and retail contemporary British art and craft. In 1959, Rothschild opened Primavera in Cambridge by taking over the shop formerly run by the Cambridge Society of Designer-Craftsmen on King's Parade. Notable potters such as Lucie Rie and Bernard Leach came to Primavera to sell their work.

Henry Rothschild (1913 - 2009) first became interested in the crafts when he encountered them in Italy in 1944 while on Army service with the Royal Corps of Signals. On his return to England, he researched British crafts and decided to found Primavera in Sloane Street, to showcase the best British handcrafted and decorative arts. Primavera’s blend of retail outlet and art gallery caught the imagination of both the public and the fashionable magazines of the day, including Vogue, Ideal Home and House and Garden. Primavera offered stoneware by the Winchcombe and Crowan potteries, tin-glaze from the Cole brothers' Rye Pottery, tableware by Lucie Rie, textiles, furniture and basketwork being exhibited and sold. From 1953, Primavera developed an exhibition programme showing diverse crafts including continental ceramics, toys, sculpture and folk art. The reputation of the gallery enabled Rothschild to promote arts education in schools and to support museums and local authorities in putting together art and craft collections.

Following the establishment of Primavera in Cambridge, the interior was refitted by Gordon and Ursula Bowyer and the basement redesigned as a textile showroom. Marion Goodwin and Valerie Webb were appointed as managers and focused on sourcing local crafts. The upstairs gallery space at 10 King's Parade was once home to Charles Lamb, the poet and essayist, along with his sister Mary in 1819.

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