Spode Porcelain Botanical Specimen Dish With a Spiderwort Plant After William Curtis

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Description

Spode Porcelain Botanical Dish, Spiderwort, Circa 1810-1820


A Regency Spode dessert dish with a single, perfect subject: a spiderwort, painted … Read more Spode Porcelain Botanical Dish, Spiderwort, Circa 1810-1820


A Regency Spode dessert dish with a single, perfect subject: a spiderwort, painted large in purple-magenta with its buds on curling red stalks and two long striped leaves, alone on the white porcelain the way a specimen sits on the page of a botanical print. Which is exactly the point — turn it over and the flower is named, Spiderwort, in flowing iron-red script above the Spode mark. The factory’s painters worked from the hand-colored plates of Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, the great gardening journal of the day, and each piece of the service got its own plant and its own title, so dessert came with a small course in botany.

The dish is a deep, shaped oval that comes to a point at each end, each point with a little gilded shell handle painted with a white anthemion, the scalloped rim traced in gold. It comes from the same named-specimen service as other Spode botanical dishes we hold.

Lovely propped on a stand where the flower reads as the small painting it is, hung in a group of botanicals, or used — Spode made it for fruit and sweetmeats, and it still does the job with style.

Dimensions
Length: 11.125 inches; Width: 7.75 inches; Height: 2.25 inche See less