Boston State House Pair of Staffordshire Blue and White Pottery Plates, John Rogers & Son Circa 1825

Details

Description

Boston State House Pair of Staffordshire Blue and White Pottery Plates, John Rogers & Son
Circa 1825

This pair of … Read more Boston State House Pair of Staffordshire Blue and White Pottery Plates, John Rogers & Son
Circa 1825

This pair of underglaze blue-printed pearlware plates depicts the Boston State House in the fullest of the three versions of the view recorded for John Rogers & Son of Longport, with all five of its principal motifs present: the two framing trees, the cattle standing and lying in the foreground, the sheep grazing on the slope behind them, the boy with a wheelbarrow, and the small figures strolling on the Common, which was still in use as a public pasture when the plates were made.

Charles Bulfinch’s domed State House rises on its hill at the center behind a long fence, with the neighboring houses of Beacon Hill to either side. The view is printed in the deep, lustrous cobalt of the 1820s and enclosed within the Rogers firm’s characteristic border of large flowers and trailing foliage, the shaped rim edged with a band of pointed lappets.

The pair hangs well on a wall, alone or as the start of a larger group of dark blue Staffordshire, and stands equally well on plate stands on a dresser, mantel, or bookshelf, where the State House view reads clearly across a room.

Dimensions
Diameter: 8¾ inches (22.2 cm)

Marks
Each plate with impressed ROGERS mark to the reverse, one with a blue painted workman’s mark.

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition
The plates are in excellent antique condition, retaining the high-contrast dark blue characteristic of the 1820s.

References
Patriotic America: Blue Printed Pottery Celebrating a New Nation, online exhibition of the Transferware Collectors Club, Winterthur Museum, and Historic New England, “Boston State House #1 – Rogers,” where the five principal motifs of this version are set out and the two reduced versions, #2 and #3, are illustrated.

Historic New England, plate with the same view by John Rogers & Son, impressed ROGERS, GUSN-53193.

Ellouise Baker Larsen, American Historical Views on Staffordshire China, 3rd edition (New York: Dover Publications, 1975).

Historical Context
Charles Bulfinch’s Massachusetts State House, its cornerstone laid on July 4, 1795, and the building completed in January 1798, was modeled in part on Somerset House in London and brought English neoclassicism to the new republic, becoming at once Boston’s defining landmark. The view on these plates is traditionally said to derive from a sketch of 1804 attributed to Dobbins, which shares the grouped cattle and the boy with a wheelbarrow, and it records Boston Common as a working pasture, cows having grazed beneath the State House dome until the practice was ended in 1830. John Rogers & Son of Longport (circa 1815–1842), among the most accomplished of the Staffordshire potters supplying the American market, issued the view in the dark blue of the 1820s on plates, platters, and hollow wares; more than thirty forms are recorded, and it remains one of the most sought-after of all American historical views.

(Ref: NY9393B-NKC) See less