Product Details

Hops, vines, and a harvest afternoon printed in deep sepia brown - the hops-and-vine border is the tell that stops a transferware collector mid-scroll. SPECS: Rimmed soup plate / wide-rim bowl, approx 8 1/2 in diameter. Brown transfer print on cream earthenware. Deep well, generous decorated rim, pastoral center scene with figures, a working horse, and a great spreading tree. Base carries an impressed crown with arched lettering above it, plus a small impressed diamond workman's mark. No printed maker mark and no printed country-of-origin mark. HISTORY: The hops-and-vine border wrapped around a pastoral figure-and-livestock center is the signature of the Rural Scenes series, the pattern W. T. Copeland registered in 1850 after commissioning the artist Edward Duncan to paint a set of sepia watercolors of English country life. Later printings of the series dropped the border and were sold as Duncan Scenes. The brown-on-cream printings date from roughly 1878 onward, and the impressed crown-with-arch backstamp is the form Copeland used through the second half of the 19th century. Attribution here is pattern-based and mark-consistent rather than read letter for letter, so it is offered as attributed, not stamped and certified. DATE: Estimated c.1880s. Evidence: the impressed crown-and-arch mark form, the absence of any ENGLAND country-of-origin marking, and the brown printing period for this series. An estimate on the evidence, not a confirmed production date.