Octagonal platter
Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England
1833-1847
Maker
Copeland & Garrett (1833-1847), successors to Spoke Works
Measurements
1-5/8 in x 18-5/8 in x 14 in
Materials
Glazed and painted soft-paste porcelain (bone china)
Credit Line
Historic Odessa Foundation, anonymous loan
Accession Number
2011.113
Provenance
Ex coll. H. Rodney Sharp
Comments
This platter, as well as another platter, accession no. 2011.114, and a set of six plates, 2011.102< were commissioned to expand a large set of Chinese porcelain tablewares of 1765-1780, represented by accession nos. 2011.103 through 2011.112. This English-made platter and the other objects in the set are remarkably faithful in their shapes and decoration to the Chinese wares. They were made by a firm led by William Thomas Garrett and William Taylor Copeland, successors to Josiah Spode’s factory. The Garrett-Copeland partnership lasted until Garrett’s retirement. Copeland continued the business on his own.
Spode tablewares were known for their high-quality bodies that imitated—but did not reproduce—Chinese porcelains. Instead, they were not quite as hard, durable, and translucent, although they did include kaolin, one of the key materials in Chinese porcelains. Spode also used bone ash (calcined bone) and feldspar, a mineral that helped vitrify the body, producing a more Chinese-like material.
