Fruit plate treasures

Not long ago I bought this plate. It looks a bit garish here but it's a lovely clear bright lime green. It completed my set - I also have a blue-grey and a pink in the same style.

These are just basic English-made transfers applied to plain plates and surrounded with a band of sprayed-on glaze, but for some weird reason I really like them and have had them on my wall for years. This series is backstamped in gold with italicised Crown Lynn and holes have been made on the back so they can be hung on the wall. I hang them in the spring-loaded hangers though - much safer.

At an educated guess, I would say these plates are 1950s. (Yes they were in the 1960s chapter in my NZ Icon book but I think I was a few years out!) There are also gorgeous 1950s jugs with the same fruit decoration - I see them on TradeMe now and then but so far I haven't managed to grab one.

 

These same transfers also appear on Crown Lynn plates backstamped Covent Garden British. I have this pear plate and another with berries.



This is an extremely cool backstamp - one of the 'British' series when Tom Clark was trying to give the impression that his products were made in England, the traditional home of quality china.

I do wonder who designed these backstamps.  I have come across one record of Tam Mitchell the modeller doing the 'Starline' mark in 1961, and I guess the others were done by him or by other designers. They are real little works of art.

 

Crown Lynn used similar fruit motifs much later, probably in the  late 1970s and early 1980s. This little jam dish (pin dish) is one example; there are others on larger dinner plates in the Apollo shape.

This little dish has a Kelston backstamp.

There is one pitfall with these fruit decorations. The transfers were not exclusive to Crown Lynn and you also see English plates with the same decorations. This one is Old Foley, I have also seen them on Royal Winton and Elijah Cotton (Lord Nelson Ware).  You will see that the pattern on this pink plate is exactly the same as the one on my new lime green Crown Lynn wall plate...

 

 

That's all for now, time to venture out into the garden..

More next week

ValM