Printed earthenware is material history for several reasons, including its reflection of the variety of Victorian interests. These two plates, both dating from the 1880s, illustrate how widely those interests ranged. The plate at the left, from the Scottish pottery of J. Marshall & Co. (illustration 11), shows a continued interest in romanticized scenery, but unlike the plate in illustration 5 (with a view from Canadian Scenery) this is a purely fanciful scene. The pattern name, "Bosphorus", however, conjures up visions of exotic, faraway lands, a conception appealing to the romanticism of the Victorians, an appeal heightened by poets, artists, and travel writers of the day. "Bosphorus" tablewares occur at this period in the records of J.D. Laflamme, a general storekeeper in West Winchester, Ontario.
Very different in spirit is the second plate (from an unidentified British potter) whose pattern reflects the Japanese mania, at its height in the early 1880s. Through the cult of the Japanese, as spread across Canada by such Anglo-Japanese tablewares as this, the rarefied world of the Aesthetic Movement, that "arty" spirit which prevailed on both sides of the Atlantic touched even rural households: Laflamme was stocking a chamber set in Japanese style at the same time that he was selling "Bosphorus" plates and teaware. Note such typical symbols of aestheticism as a Japanese fan, an oriental landscape (introduced on an actual plate worked into the design), a lily in an oriental pot, and a sunflower.
Courtesy: National Museum of Man, National Museums of Canada (S81-10) Private Collection
