Bread Plate by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852)

Bread Plate

Designer: Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852)

Manufacturer: Minton & Co

1849

Diameter 13.5" (34 cm)

Ceramic, inlaid with various colours.

Image and caption material © copyright The Fine Art Society with Haslam & Whiteway Ltd. [Click on the image for a larger picture.]

Related Material

Later plate of the same design

With its ears of wheat radiating out from the centre, and its earnest moral text in Gothic lettering, this was one of Pugin's most popular designs for domestic use. In fact the Victoria and Albert Museum comments that it is "widely accepted as an icon of Gothic Revival design," and that there were several versions, all made by the medieval encaustic method of inlaying coloured clays, a method primarily employed for tiles: "the basic three-colour version was the most common, but a six-colour variant was also made, as was a version which instead was decorated with opaque maiolica glazes." — Jacqueline Banerjee.

Reference

"Waste Not Want Not." V&A. Web. 25 May 2014.

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Last modified 25 May 2014