Plate (Dinner plate)

Description

This salt-glazed stoneware plate portrays “The Shining Acquisition of Mambrino’s Helmet,” a scene from the early 1600s Spanish novel “Don Quixote de La Mancha,” by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616). International fascination with this story continues to the modern day in print, film, and other media, including most famously on the stage as the musical “The Man of La Mancha.” Several Winterthur museum objects portray different Quixote scenes. These include a 1740s hand-painted Chinese export porcelain plate (2001.0020.003); a late 1700s French printed textile (1969.3273); an 1820s green-transfer-printed earthenware plate and dish (1969.1612, 1969.1633) from Staffordshire, England; and an 1880s American glass child’s alphabet plate (2023.0014.007). An 1800s print in the museum collection features a portrait of the author Cervantes (1966.0216.001), and numerous illustrated editions of Don Quixote, dating from the early 1700s onward, are included in the Winterthur Library collection. Transfer-printing on salt-glazed stoneware most commonly is associated with Liverpool printers John Sadler and Guy Green or with Staffordshire factories. Research suggests, however, that though this plate was made in Staffordshire, it received its red printed ornament from Stephen Theodore Janssen and John Brooks at York House, Battersea, England. Among other salt-glazed plates associated with Battersea is a Winterthur Aesop’s Fable plate portraying “The Ass and the Boar” (1975.0087) and a red-printed Aesop plate (“The Dog in the Manger”) that was excavated at the Ravenscroft site in Williamsburg, Virginia.