Wedgwood Patrician Plate in Cream Earthenware, Embossed Scrollwork Border with Polychrome Flower Basket and Hand-Gilt Beaded Rim, c. 1920–1940

The Piece

A cream Wedgwood plate whose border is moulded rather than printed, with a single painted basket of flowers at the centre.

The wide rim is worked in relief — foliate scrollwork running in panels, with rosettes, shells and small blossoms standing up out of the surface. All of it is in the body colour. There is no colour anywhere on the border; the pattern is entirely light and shadow.

At the extreme edge runs a fine band of black and gold beading: a chain of small gilt balls set in scallops, laid on over the glaze.

The centre carries a polychrome flower basket — a footed, gilt-banded basket filled with red and yellow anemones, purple and blue blossom, green leaves, grapes and cherries, with a sprig of red flowers spilling over the foot.

Underneath: an impressed WEDGWOOD pressed into the clay, alongside a printed green factory mark and a painted code.

History & Provenance

Patrician is a named Wedgwood shape, and on this plate the shape is the pattern. The border was cut into the mould, so the decoration is in the body of the plate rather than on it — it cannot wear off, cannot fade, and reads across a room as texture. A plate like this is fully decorated before anything is printed or painted on it at all.

The impressed mark is one of the longest-running maker's marks in ceramics. Josiah Wedgwood began pressing WEDGWOOD into the underside of his ware as early as 1759, and it is still there, in the clay, on this plate made the better part of two centuries later. Very few marks in any trade have that continuity.

The printed mark carries the date evidence. The word ENGLAND in a Wedgwood mark places a piece at 1891 or after, when country-of-origin marking became the rule for goods entering the American market. The fuller wording MADE IN ENGLAND comes in after 1908, and progressively replaces the shorter form through the twentieth century.

The gold was laid on by hand, last of all. Look at the beaded chain: the gilding is full and bright down in the hollows between the beads and thin across the tops of them. That is how hand-applied gold wears — the high points rub against cloth, other plates and fingers first. Gold applied by a later mechanical process wears flat and evenly, and gold that is printed rather than laid on does not have the depth this has where it survives.

The centre is a printed outline filled in with enamel colours over the glaze, which is why the flowers sit slightly proud of the surface and catch the light differently from the cream ground around them.

Dated on the Patrician shape, the impressed and printed marks, the hand-gilt beading and its pattern of wear, and the polychrome enamelling over the transfer: c. 1920–1940.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

A single good plate is a decorating object. It is only when you have eleven of them that it becomes a storage problem.

Bought one at a time, a plate like this goes on a stand on a shelf, on a wall over a doorway, on a dresser leaned against the back, under a lamp, under a candlestick, or on a hall table taking keys. It asks for none of the commitment a service asks for, and it does considerably more visual work than most objects its size.

The relief border is the reason to choose this one. Printed patterns read as pattern; moulded ones read as texture, and texture survives distance and low light. Put this plate on a wall across a room and what you see is a ring of shadow and cream and one small bright bouquet at its centre — a composition, not a picture of flowers.

It also mixes. Because the border carries no colour at all, the plate sits happily beside blue and white, beside plain white, beside brown transferware, and beside pieces from three other centuries. The gold at the edge is what ties it to anything brass or gilt in the room.

And it is a Wedgwood, marked in the clay. That is an unusually solid thing to be able to say about a plate on a shelf.

A note on care, and gold is the whole of it. Never put this in a dishwasher. Detergent strips over-glaze gilding, and it does it in a handful of cycles rather than over years. Hand wash in warm water with a soft cloth and dry it immediately.

Never put it in a microwave. Metallic gold arcs, which will scar the plate and can damage the oven.

Do not scour the centre; the enamel colours sit on top of the glaze rather than under it and an abrasive pad will take them back. If you stack it with other plates, put felt or paper between them — the gilding at the rim is the first thing to go, and stacking is how it goes.