Object Type
Huge meat-plates of blue-printed Staffordshire earthenware have survived in large numbers, due both to the large numbers which were made and to their occasional use - most probably for Sunday roast beef lunches. Ideal for their purpose, these dishes with all-over printed decoration replaced the plain creamware or pearlware versions with a moulded and blue or green painted 'shell' edge which was popular around 1800. Towards the 1840s, improved types were developed, with a well for the gravy at one end and little feet at the other.

Design & Designing
After about 1790, when under-glazed blue transfer-printing was adopted for earthenwares rather than porcelain, engravers working for the pottery industry cast their nets ever-wider to find source material. Chinese prototypes were soon exhausted, to be replaced by fantasy designs in the Chinese idiom until about 1820, when a fruitful source suddenly presented itself: travel books. These were plundered and adapted, so that where a print - now transferred with special printing tissue and adjustable to almost any size - was not large enough to fill a meat plate, roughly similar bits were added from elsewhere. Not surprisingly, it was rare for either the scenes or the manufacturers' names to be marked on the back of these high-quality but cheap tablewares.