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Exhibition banner - painting of a man seated by a tree
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MINTON : STAFFORDSHIRE (C. 1793-1873)

Tray

1833

RCIN 41596

This group contains three examples from a sixty-place dinner service made by the Royal Copenhagen factory of a pattern known as Flora Danica, after the multi-volume botanical encyclopedia of the same name. Each piece has the Latin name of the plants on its reverse, along with a reference to the relevant plates in the encyclopaedia. The Minton pen tray below was a 14th birthday gift to Princess Victoria, later Queen Victoria, and features her coronet at its centre. Below this are two bowls from the Coalport factory in Shropshire, which during the 1820s and 1830s developed its own style of encrusted ware. The fashion for encrusted ware was intense, but short-lived: none was exhibited at the Great Exhibition in 1851. However some continental factories revived the fashion towards the end of the nineteenth century. This Meissen tea service (known as a tête à tête), is such an example, and would have allowed two confidantes to take tea. The encrusted forget-me-nots with their scrolling stems would have perhaps reflected the relationship between the couple.

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