Plate from Dessert Service: Polyanthus (c. 1800): Art, History and Details

Plate from Dessert Service: Polyanthus (c. 1800) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Derby (Crown Derby Period) (British).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Each dish is decorated with recognizable plants, the names of which are inscribed on the base in both Latin and English. Identifying the blossoms only became customary in the late 18th century when a single piece of porcelain was decorated with one species, and flowers were represented along with leaves, stems, seed pods, and roots. All of this reflects Carolus Linnaeus’s recent invention of a scientific method to categorize all known flora. The decorations on the Derby factory’s products derive from contemporary English botanical publications. For instance, illustrations in William Curtis’s The Botanical Magazine served as models for the French marigold and nettle-leaved bell flower on the dessert service.

Object facts

• Title: Plate from Dessert Service: Polyanthus
• Date: c. 1800
• Creator attribution: Derby (Crown Derby Period) (British)
• Culture: England, Derby, 18th century
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: porcelain
• Dimensions: Diameter: 23.6 cm (9 5/16 in.); Overall: 3.4 cm (1 5/16 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1989.189.11

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. Severance A. Millikin

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.