Plate, "Natural Bridge, Virginia"
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. Plate, "Natural Bridge, Virginia", ca. 1840. Earthenware, 9 3/16 x 9 3/16 in. (23.3 x 23.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mrs. Ben P. Grant in memory of Dr. and Mrs. Henry Fleming Payne, 72.184.11. Creative Commons-BY (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 72.184.11_bw.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Maker
Title
Plate, "Natural Bridge, Virginia"
Date
ca. 1840
Geography
Place made: Burslem, Staffordshire, England
Medium
Earthenware
Classification
Dimensions
9 3/16 x 9 3/16 in. (23.3 x 23.3 cm)
Markings
Base printed with spray of flowers and foliage and the legend: "NATURAL BRIDGE / VIRGINIA / E W & S / CELTIC CHINA"; also black numeral "10"
Credit Line
Gift of Mrs. Ben P. Grant in memory of Dr. and Mrs. Henry Fleming Payne
Accession Number
72.184.11
Rights
Creative Commons-BY
You may download and use Brooklyn Museum images of this three-dimensional work in accordance with a Creative Commons license. Fair use, as understood under the United States Copyright Act, may also apply. Please include caption information from this page and credit the Brooklyn Museum. If you need a high resolution file, please fill out our online application form (charges apply). For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.
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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