Plate

About Plate

A plate offers a flat, circular surface, and potters and painters have long treated it as a picture. In 16th-century Urbino, maiolica painters covered plates with scenes from myth and history in a style called istoriato. Chinese porcelain plates painted in blue and enamels reached Europe in vast numbers, and Vieillard & Cie in Bordeaux later decorated faience with Japanese-inspired birds and blossoms. Pablo Picasso painted and incised plates at the Madoura pottery in Vallauris after the Second World War.

Studio potters today range widely: Tomoo Hamada works in the Mashiko stoneware tradition, Marit Tingleff trails coloured slips across large earthenware dishes, and Ruan Hoffmann paints plates with loose figures and words. Bob Stocksdale turned bowls and platters from rare woods. Look at the foot rim, the glaze on the underside, maker's marks and scratches from knives.