Description:
Chinese export porcelain platter decorated with a variation of the Great Seal of the United States with the eagle holding a banner in its beak inscribed, “E PLURIBUS UNUM,” in red, blue, green brown, black, and gilding. This large platter is identical to a tea service brought back from China to Providence, Rhode Island, by Henry Smith (1766-1818). Smith was a nephew of Sarah Smith (1738-1825), wife of Providence merchant John Brown (1736-1803), and supercargo of the ship "George Washington" on its 1794 maiden voyage. At the age of 16, he apprenticed to his uncle, John Brown, who encouraged him to take a more active role in the firm by investing in ships. Referring to the "George Washington," John Brown wrote “I still think …that you ought to be an owner of the ship…it would give you consequence both at home and abroad as well as on board ship.” After amassing a large fortune in trade, Smith constructed an imposing Providence mansion overlooking Narragansett Bay from what today is known as Smith Hill. Although a dinner service belonging to Henry Smith has not yet been identified, this platter’s similarities to his tea set are striking. The Smith tea set, owned by the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, contains two dozen surviving pieces, each bearing the motto and Great Seal of the United States, painted in red, white, and blue enamels. In the past it was thought that Moses Brown owned this set. However, with its close decorative connections to the “Henry Smith” punch bowl at the Winterthur Museum (1959.149), the set is now thought to have been purchased by Henry Smith. Winterthur’s punch bowl (1959.0149) is inscribed “Henry Smith / Canton / 1794” and decorated with the Great Seal of the United States, the arms of the State of Rhode Island with the motto “IN GOD WE HOPE,” and an image of his ship "George Washington." The Great Seal of the United States was finalized and approved in 1782, but the prototype for Smith’s porcelain appears to be adapted from the engraved masthead of a Providence weekly newspaper, the "United States Chronicle." Publisher Bennett Wheeler used this image on every issue between January 5, 1786, and May 17, 1804. A newspaper would have been a portable and compact design source that Smith undoubtedly provided for the Chinese artists to copy. The motto “E PLURIBUS UNUM” (Out of Many, One) derives from The English magazine, "The Gentleman’s Magazine", which carried the phrase on its title page and was well known to literate Americans of the time. There is also a similar double-handled cup and saucer in the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass, which Jean McClure Mudge (1986) writes "best approximates the U.S. seal."
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+60.049 |
