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• 1 media/_s_a4Ab4Ac1BCd1BCe0f0g64hEAEAE1CDD2CAi2Dj0k64l1F4m1F4.jpg media/plate.png 2021-03-30T18:16:59-07:00 Plate, 1820-1825 13 plain 1068816 2021-05-20T19:16:46-07:00 "Plate" is a blue-transfer printed pearlware plate. It was made by a pot-working business in Longport, England, called John Rogers & Son. The business was originally founded by a pair of brothers, named John and George. However, George passed away in 1815 and John also passed away in 1816. John Rogers's son, Spencer, then inherited the business. Spencer renamed the business John Rogers & Son and continued the potworks until 1842 (The Transferware Collectors Club, The Winterthur Museum, & Historic New England 2017). A print of Boston Common and the State House consumes most of the plate while a floral border is printed along the outside edge. Cows are shown grazing on the Common's grass. Behind the cows are a few individuals strolling by sheep and a boy with a wheelbarrow. This depiction of Boston Common conveys the landscape's pastoral nature in the early 19th century (Historic New England).
  
  Material Composition
  
  This plate is considered to be a pearlware relic with a blue transfer-print upon it. It is one of a few Boston Common prints that John Rogers & Son commissioned. Pearlware was introduced in 1779 by Josiah Wedgwood as an alternative to porcelain ware, creamware, and earthenware by covering creamware fabric with a blue-tinged glaze (Sussman 1977, p. 105). Pearlware emerged as a response to the demands of the market; by the 1770s, the market for undecorated creamware was declining so Staffordshire potters sought a new product (Miller & Earls 2008). The initial product that potters came up with was called "China-glaze," which was meant to replicate Chinese porcelain patterns. However, the China-glaze imitation wares could not compete with the original porcelain wares. Wedgwood's pearlware emerged as the temporary solution to the pressures of the market (Miller & Earls 2008). While pearlwares with blue painting on them were the most common type of porcelain pottery found in the early 19th century, printed wares were the most expensive and most limited (Miller & Earls 2008). Because transfer-printed pearlwares were expensive and uncommon compared to alternative ceramic products, "Plate" was a valuable piece of decor in early 19th-century America.
  Transfer prints became the favored decoration of pearlware plates in the 19th century, resulting in the growth of matching serving sets (which cost considerably more to acquiesce) (Sussman 1977, p. 109). "Plate" is one pearlware ceramic out of a larger set that uses the same print of Boston Common, including tea bowls and soup plates.
  
  Produced in Longport, England, the plate was crafted by potters from Staffordshire County. Staffordshire was known for its pottery manufacturing district, colloquially referred to as "The Potteries" (The Transferware Collectors Club, Winterthur Museum, & Historic New England). The conditions of the potteries were variable in the early 19th century. While many of these spaces were occupied by masters and apprentices, child labor was not uncommon; in some rooms, great numbers of children would be congregated to work together while there were other potteries that may have only employed one or two children (Birks). From the medieval period, the potteries catered to local markets. However, England's imperial endeavors in the early modern period introduced new markets for these potters. By the late 17th and 18th centuries, Staffordshire products were found across the Atlantic in the American colonies (The Transferware Collectors Club, Winterthur Museum, & Historic New England). In the 1810s, Staffordshire potters were ready and eager to resume trade with American importers after the duration of the War of 1812 had crippled their access to a vital market for the industry. For a brief period following the conclusion of the War of 1812, a heightened demand for the ceramic trade occurred after renewed American connections to the Staffordshire pottery trade (The Transferware Collectors Club, Winterthur Museum, & Historic New England). In the late 1810s, John Rogers & Son was given an order for "blue printed dining ware, new dark pattern, State House" (The Transferware Collectors Club, Winterthur Museum, & Historic New England). Consequently, it is likely that this plate was imported from the potteries in Staffordshire in the midst of a renewed Atlantic trade for ceramic serving sets. John Rogers & Son manufactured "Plate" and sold it to American importers as a part of a larger set of dining ware.
  Imported serving sets were generally distinctive to wealthy households. Although much of the Massachusetts population ate with forks and knives in this period, most ate from coarse earthenware, wood, or pewter; only a tiny portion of the population dined on imported porcelains (Bushman 1993, p. 78). As matching ceramic serving sets were expensive and unique to the upper class, the material composition of "Plate" suggests that a family with wealth owned it.
• 1 2021-05-03T12:44:20-07:00 Plate Visual Elements 8 plain 2021-05-20T19:26:36-07:00 Visual Elements
  
  This particular portrayal of Boston Common and the State House offers an intriguing window into how people conceived of the landscape as an open pasture. Views of American landscapes began appearing on printed pearlwares around 1818 (Miller & Earls 2008). Although made specifically for the American market, most of the patterns continued to be general in nature. However, there was a small group of designs that became the most desirable of all collectible printed pottery - patterns illustrating the new nation of the United States (The Transferware Collectors Club, The Winterthur Museum, & Historic New England). Consequently, the image of Boston Common and the State House that is printed on "Plate" would be considered a highly desirable ceramic in early 19th-century America, one that hearkened back to the nation’s founding moment.
  The State House added immeasurably to the Common's appeal because America's upper classes valued neighborhoods near elegant seats of government (Rawson 2014, p. 34). In fact, the State House was so well liked that some wealthy Bostonians set their tables with plates, platters, pitchers, and creamers adorned with renderings of the State House presiding over a Common dotted with cows (Rawson 2014, p. 55).
  

  Beneath the State House are cows and sheep grazing, a worker with a wheelbarrow, and a few individuals on a stroll. In the early 19th century, carpet cleaning and militia drilling were still regular occurrences on the Common, holdovers from the 17th century (Rawson 2014, p. 29). The cows did the most work of all by grazing all day and doing the biological labor of turning grass into milk (Rawson 2014, p. 30).  Bostonians’ relationship to this natural landscape began to change significantly around 1820 when wealthier families began to move to the area. Although white upper-class Bostonians valued pastoral imagery of Boston Common, their relationship with the actual Common was more tenuous in this period. Wealthier Bostonians were developing a preference for a more recreational relationship to natural landscapes in the early 19th century and, as a result, they came to believe that productive activities were degrading the gentility of the Common and inhibited their enjoyment of the land (Rawson 2014, p. 23). Reformers focused their attention on removing the cows from the Common and regulating pasturage, resulting in a decade-long civic debate between the upper classes and working classes over the use of the Common (Pendery 1990, p. 45). Working class individuals valued the land for access to labor while upper-class Bostonians used it for leisure (Rawson 2014, p. 23). Interestingly, both groups' relationships with the land are portrayed in this image, perhaps signifying the growing schism between socioeconomic groups and their conceptions of nature. Aristocratic distaste for manual labor inspired a landscape ideal that treated productive work as if it were inconsistent with nature, reflecting a larger unraveling of the close relationship between labor and leisure in America (Rawson 2014, p. 36). Boston Common was beginning to shift from a pasture into a park in this period because the upper class sought to reform the Common into a place for recreation.

  
  This depiction of the State House on John Rogers & Son's plate was tied to emerging artistic trends that supported land enclosure and consolidation, inspiring new ways of thinking about nature and capitalism (Rawson 2014, p. 55). Around this time in New England, environmental philosophy had begun to shift away from Romanticism. Drawing from rational lines of thought, people began to believe the pastoral landscape brought its own rewards (Ruff 2015, p. 122). The image of the landscape started to represent aesthetic, moral, political, and even religious values (Ruff 2015, p. 136). Thus, a realistic representation of a pastoral Boston Common signified the land's distinct virtues and its benefits for human wellbeing. A subsequent implication of this ideological transition is that people began to regard nature as its own distinct entity because it was something separable from humanity.