Collection
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Decorative Arts and Design

Soup Plate, "Pine Orchard House, Catskill Mountains"

Enoch Wood & Sons

Brooklyn Museum photograph

Object Label

These ceramics are decorated with American landscape scenes and were made in England for the American market. Before the 1840s, only the elite could afford dinnerware, then made of expensive porcelain. One of the early fruits of the Industrial Revolution was the production of inexpensive machine-molded and mechanically decorated earthenware for the middle class. These objects were decorated by the transfer technique, in which the scene is engraved on a metal plate, inked, printed on paper, and then pressed, or transferred, onto the ceramic body.

Caption

Enoch Wood & Sons (active 1818–1846). Soup Plate, "Pine Orchard House, Catskill Mountains", ca. 1835. Earthenware, blue underglaze, 10 1/4 x 10 1/4 in. (26 x 26 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mrs. William C. Esty, 60.213.186. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

Gallery

Not on view

Title

Soup Plate, "Pine Orchard House, Catskill Mountains"

Date

ca. 1835

Medium

Earthenware, blue underglaze

Classification

(not assigned)

Dimensions

10 1/4 x 10 1/4 in. (26 x 26 cm)

Signatures

no signature

Inscriptions

no inscriptions

Markings

On bottom of plate: impressed "E. Wood and Son Burslem, Warranted" around an eagle with "Semi-China" above. Also, blue-printed eagle with scroll in mouth reading "E Pluribus Unum"; shield at eagle's feet with clouds and "Pine Orchard House, Catskill Mountains"

Credit Line

Gift of Mrs. William C. Esty

Accession Number

60.213.186

Frequent Art Questions

  • What is the technique used to make these?

    These are what is called transferware. Rather than being hand painted, which was traditionally very expensive and labor-intensive work, these designs were transferred from metal plates, a process derived from printed book illustrations. In fact, many of the decorations would be copied from images in published books.

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Artists and makers

Enoch Wood & Sons

85 works in the collection