Dish, Serving

Description

Small white oval porcelain dish. The mouth of the dish grows wider from the base finishing with a rounded rim with a very slight lip. The rim has a border made up of two thin black lines with a light green stripe 5/16" wide in between them. Underneath the border on the long side of the dish is transfer-printed text in all caps which reads "SHAKERS MT. LEBANON N.Y." The font of the text has white spaces to give the text a three-dimensionality. There are four hand-painted floral designs, two small sprigs and two larger floral arrangements. One sprig is blue and the other orange, extending off of green stems. The single blue sprig has a small green stem with one large petal at the center and a smaller petal on either side. The orange sprig is very close to a floral arrangement with four heart-shaped petals and one tripartite petal that they appear almost connected but they are separate. The floral decoration with the orange flower also consists of two orange flowerbuds. The other larger floral arrangement has one blue flower with eight petals and one blue flowerbud.

Notes

On October 12, 1886 Benjamin Gates, Cornelia French, and Mary Hazard of the Church family traveled to New York City to order plates from Union Porcelain Works. On February 20, 1887 a note in Anna Dodgsons journal refers to new plates with "Shaker & c". These are the only dishes marked with a community name.