You may sometimes have come across little plates, some pretty, some quaint, some with verses or mottoes, some with impressed alphabets or numbersround the rim.

A good many of them are children‘s plates, though nothing to do with the miniature toy plates sometimes found either singly or in sets. The ones we are talking about were for real live children to use at table, and they were generally acquired gifts. Similar to them in many ways is another class of small plates, some for cockles and whelks, some for muffins and crumpets.

The first children‘s plate I ever saw was in a tray outside a big furniture store—where it is always worth looking for the odd piece of Victoriana. Like most of them it is of a very light earthenware, and so fragile that one wonders how it managed to survive boisterous handling for over a century. It has the usual alphabet impressed round the rim, and is evidently part of a series called “The Matrimonial Ladder.” This one is entitled “Hesitation.” It shows a decorous young couple in early Victorian costume walking out together, and the rhyme goes :

Antique Collector Magazine“With soft confusion while her joy she veils, Miss gently checks her swain’s romantic tales;

She’s sure Mamma will think these raptures wild: She knows not how to yet, she’s quite a child.”

This series was clearly very popular throughout the Victorian era in other forms as well, for I recently came across a greetings card which gives a picture of a ladder, and the titles of the whole series. It shows courting in those days to be quite a protracted affair. According to my ca it starts with Rumination, and after some alteration there follows Irritation, Disputation, Desperation, and even Detestation; then a critical Separation—which evidently does the trick, however, for afterwards we have Acceptation, the inevitable Agitation before the Declaration, the maidenly Hesitation (this is where we came in), followed by Approbation, and finally Admiration and Flirtation. So if you decide to collect these, here is your full set.

Related to these are some in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which bear admonitory verses of this sort:

ATTENTION

“And when I learn my rhyme to say; And work and read and spell; I will not think about my play-

POLITENESS

“If little boys and girls were wise They’d always be polite. For sweet behaviour in a child Is a delightful sight.”

MEEKNESS

“In a modest humble mindGod himself will take delight But the proud and haughty find They are hateful in his sight.”

Many of these little plates were made in Sunderland, the ones above being credited to Fairbairns at the Newbottle pottery. Others came from Swansea where rows of impressed daisies round the rims were popular; series from there include transfer printed pictures of the Ages of Man, with quotations from Shakespeare. I have another bearin the mark of Davenport which is from the Zoological Gardens Series, showing an elephant, and there are coloured applied flowers around the rim.

Many plates have only the impressed daisies, but these are also used in combination with other sorts of printed decoration for the other purposes mentioned at the beginning. On some of them there are views, on others portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at the time of the coronation—which helps to date them.

Probably for muffins in decorous early Victorian sitting rooms are those with genteel rhymes on them. One wonders what hearts must have fluttered when a muffin was lifted to reveal the message:

“My heart is fix’d

I cannot range;

I like my choice

Too well to change.”

Designs of shells or fish no doubt denoted plates for cockles and whelks, and so too did those with the arms of Oddfellows and Buffaloes, used at formal high teas. But there is also an entirely different sort of cockle plate which is much smaller, more like the little plain rimless saucers one sees on whelk stalls today. These have beautifully printed views on them.

A very humble branch of collecting, no doubt, but fascinating for anyone interested in discovering what ordinary people got up to a century ago.

This is another of those collections which could well be associated with other things than china. Children‘s plates go along with early children’s books and toys. Lovers’ messages appear in many other forms—on Valentines, rolling pins, plaques. As for the cockle plates, what fun to hunt through old volumes of “Punch” and other sources of illustrations to find out just what those Oddfellows looked like when they were all sitting eating cockles at high tea.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Children, Cockles and Muffins