Description:
One of two English Staffordshire soup plates decorated in dark blue with a transfer printed scene of the Boston State House in the center and an elaborate floral pattern around the rim of the deeply curved well, which is unmarked but was an export pattern produced by six Staffordshire manufacturers including John Rogers & Son working 1815-1842; Joseph Stubbs working c.1822-1836; and Enoch Wood (1759-1840) who started his firm in 1784, which continued under his sons until 1846. This is an export pattern produced by John Rogers & Son, working 1815-1842. Although the firm had a large export trade with many countries, it did not compete with the major Staffordshire exporters in the North American trade, and therefore few American scenes are recorded (only the Boston State House and the Boston Harbour are known American market scenes.) Evidence of the firm’s American trade is to be found in the order book of the Boston merchant Horace Collamore, who gave the factory three orders; the first, for twenty five crates on 23rd May, 1814; the second, for three crates and five hogsheads on 4th December 1815; and the third, for twenty five crates, on 4th May 1816. The last order was placed to ‘John Rogers & Son’, noting the change of title following the death of one of the founding partners. This view is one of three different views of the Boston State House, each with a different border; this example was made on complete dinner services. This pattern was also sold on the home market and in Italy. Several early scholars point to this Dobbins "sketch," dated 1804, that is at present in a private collection as the source material for Rogers' version of the Boston State House views. The only version available for study is a later reproduction created for a 1910 book by Mary Ayers, titled "Early Days on Boston Common." Versions of this image are in the collection of the Bostonian Society, along with a pair of hand-colored children's drawings, one of which appears on the back of a piece of 18th-century Italian sheet music. There are clear problems with the Dobbins' sketch as the source for Rogers' view. The cows are different, as the one standing cow is grazing with its head down. In addition to the grouped cows in the foreground, the boy and wheelbarrow in the middleground, Dobbins' painting also contains a woman, child, and babe-in-arms in the extreme left foreground. This grouping does not appear in any other version of the image. Additionally, the Dobbins' watercolor has a different, and more distant, perspective on the Common and State House. This transfer-printed scene shows Charles Bulfinch's State House on the top of Beacon Hill with the Hancock House on the left and other buildings on Beacon and Park streets, people, and scattered trees. As the three cows, one standing and facing right, in the foreground illustrate, the Common was being used as pasture, but the city officially banned all cows from the park in 1830. Enoch Wood has a similar view but the standing cow faces left. Condition:? The City of Boston Archaeology found transfer printed plate fragment of this pattern, which were recovered from the 19th-century privy at the Parker-Emery house in the North End. They also add that "This pattern was extremely popular around the 1820s when the plate was manufactured. 32 different versions of this view were produced by at least 6 potteries."
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