Object Type
In the early 19th century English pottery and porcelain dinner services entirely superseded those imported from China. As before, large numbers of plates and dishes were required. Increasingly these plates were modelled on silverware, with wavy and heavily-moulded rims.

Collectors & Owners
This plate is part of a service that was acquired by the V&A from Miss H. M. Gulson, who had inherited it from her uncle, Josiah Spode IV (1823-1893). Although the V&A wished to accept only a token number of pieces because of the impossibility of displaying the service in its entirety, eventually it agreed to take all of them rather than destroy the integrity of a documentary service. Since 1902 the service has largely remained in store, although parts have in recent years been loaned to 10 Downing Street. The British Galleries now provide a fitting permanent display of the many different shapes used in the service.

The family provenance suggests that the service represents the grandest and most opulent porcelain made at the factory at Stoke-on-Trent in the last years of the Spode family's ownership. The factory archives reveal that the moulded shape 'Royal Embossed' was first made about 1831, a date that exactly agrees with the introduction of this service's painted pattern (no. 4964). It would seem, therefore, that Josiah Spode IV, who was only eight years old in 1831, may have inherited it at a later date from his father, Josiah Spode III.