As a tribute to her fifty years’ commitment to The Attingham Trust, one of the causes closest to her heart, we have set up a scholarship fund to be the focus of professional memory for Dame Rosalind Savill.

As well as being a titan in the world of decorative arts, museums and ceramics scholarship, Ros touched many people with the warmth of her personality and her sense of fun and we are delighted that her family are so supportive of our wish to remember her in this way.

The Dame Rosalind Savill Scholarship will support a decorative arts scholar on either The Attingham Summer School or Royal Collection Studies, courses on which Ros inspired generations of curators and heritage professionals with her outstanding expertise and stimulating lecturing.

She first attended The Attingham Summer School in 1975. Within a few years she was not only helping to administer the course but also became one of the regular lecturers and generations of alumni will forever remember the passion and expertise with which she brought Sèvres porcelain to life, enhancing the experience with her endless enthusiasm and wit. It is not an exaggeration to say that she was a major part of the ‘life-changing’ experience many people claim an Attingham course to have been.

Ros was later a member of the Advisory Council and a Trustee. In both roles, she provided expert guidance and advice on the direction and evolution of Attingham; we continue to prioritize the importance of close-up object study that she believed was so important to an understanding and appreciation not just of porcelain but of all the decorative arts which she loved so much. A scholarship awarded in her name will ensure that this ethos is not only preserved but is handed onto future generations.

Whether a professional colleague, a lover of French porcelain, an Attingham alumnus or a personal friend, your donation would be enormously appreciated. Contributions are welcomed for any amount, and money can be pledged in instalments. A very generous anonymous donor has offered to match the first £25,000 that is received from individual donations of £500 or less.

We hope that this scholarship will be seen as an appropriate and fitting way in which to help perpetuate Ros’s legacy in the fields of international art scholarship and museum practice to which she contributed so significantly.

Thank you for your generous support.

To find out more about The Attingham Trust, or for more information on the scholarship, please use the link below.

https://www.attinghamtrust.org/